Clearest effect in the U.S. came from added schooling in the college years
July 22, 2025
Attaining more schooling can ward off dementia later in life, according to new research from Upjohn Institute Vice President and Director of Research Alfonso Flores-Lagunes and coauthors that shows that the schooling itself improves older-age brain functioning.
Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementia affect around 11 percent of older Americans and cases are projected to more than double in the next 35 years. Worldwide, older adults represent an increasing share of the population and countries face a sharp increase in dementia cases.
Flores-Lagunes and his team describe their research in two academic journal articles and an Upjohn Institute policy brief. One article focuses on the United States and the other on a handful of low- and middle-income countries on four continents. (Open-access working paper versions are available for both articles.)
Seeking strategies to add years of healthy brain function
Dealing with dementia has huge and growing costs for society, including in health care for patients and in burdens, such as labor market losses , on caregivers. Given this, public officials have long sought strategies to help people preserve brain function later in life.
Many studies have found a correlation between getting more education and this later-life brain function, but proving the extra schooling itself staved off dementia gets messy. Education is associated with typically unobserved factors such as genetics and parents’ socioeconomic status that may themselves delay the onset of dementia, regardless of education.
Research technique narrows the range of possible effects
The researchers used a technique called “bounding,” which combines weak assumptions to narrow the range of possible old-age effects of education. The approach represents a tradeoff: researchers have more confidence that the causal effect falls within this range but less ability to pinpoint its magnitude.
The first assumption is that people have unobservable characteristics, such as innate cognitive ability, that cause them both to pursue more education and also to have better old-age brain function regardless of their educational status. The second assumes that getting more education doesn’t make anyone do worse on tests of brain function in old age, which is consistent with the notion that higher schooling attainment is positively correlated with better overall health.
Finally, the researchers tied in a variable that, on average, weakly increases with old-age brain function – mother’s schooling level in the U.S. study, height in other countries – to narrow the bounds set by the first two assumptions.
Clearest effects of education on dementia vary by country
They found positive effects of schooling on old-age brain function in both studies. In the U.S. study, the clearest effect came from added schooling in the college years. Earning a college degree reduced the occurrence of dementia between 4 and 14 percent compared to just completing high school.
The clearest benefit in the low- and middle-income countries came in the lower grades: moving from no school to completing elementary school increased old-age memory test scores at least a small amount and up to 28 percent. This increased brain function due to more schooling implies offsetting up to four additional years of brain aging, although results vary by country.
The U.S. results point to greater benefits from investments in higher education, Flores-Lagunes said. “That means programs like the [free-tuition] Kalamazoo Promise that remove barriers or provide incentives to complete higher levels of schooling not only help in terms of the labor force,” he said, “but could have positive spillovers for the incidence of dementia later in life.”
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