# Country, cohort, and gender disparities in the relationship between education and ADRD

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA · 2024 · $961,455

## Abstract

Project Summary
The relationship between education and Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias (ADRD) is well-
established; however, inequalities in access to education are a fundamental social disparity, resulting in
differential cognitive outcomes in diverse contexts. Country, birth cohort, and gender disparities in access to
education and occupation can be a source of natural experiments to reveal trends and mechanisms for the
relationship between education and cognitive outcomes such as ADRD, including how genetic propensities
both manifest and change across diverse historical and social settings. We propose to leverage the Interplay of
Genes and Environment across Multiple Studies (IGEMS) consortium of longitudinal twin studies of
development and aging to clarify the role of educational inequalities for ADRD. The IGEMS consortium is a
collaboration involving 18 longitudinal twin studies of adult development and aging. Established in 2010, the
consortium has developed standard processes for collaboration, data sharing, data harmonization, and data
analyses. The current application proposes a new direction for the IGEMS consortium to support novel
investigations of the education-ADRD association in the context of country, birth cohort, and gender disparities
in access to educational opportunities, integrating multiple indicators of education. First, in addition to
harmonized International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) scores across countries and birth
cohorts, IGEMS includes polygenic scores for education (PGSED). Second, parental education measures allow
for a study of intergenerational mobility and clarifies potentially spurious relationships between education and
ADRD that result from family background effects. Third, we will examine the impact of birth cohort and country,
comparing access to educational and occupational opportunities using indexes of educational inequality
(GINIED) as well as measures of social disparities. Dynamic gender disparities that vary over context and time
will also help us to explain established gender differences in the relative protective effects of education and
occupation for cognition including ADRD. The twin structure of our data permits use of established twin
methods to test hypotheses on the nature of gene-environment (GE) interplay, while genotyping allows us to
confirm and extend these twin analyses through analyses of PGSED and polygenic scores for dementia.
Importantly, IGEMS is a multidimensionally diverse sample that spans multiple countries and historical periods,
allowing us to determine whether models of GE interplay established at the micro-level (i.e., individual) might
vary at the macro-level (i.e., country/historical period). We propose the following research aims. AIM 1:
Investigate mechanisms of educational influences on cognitive functioning and ADRD risk at multiple levels:
genetic (PGSED), individual (ISCED), inter-generational (parent ISCED), and environmental (GINIED)...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10885683
- **Project number:** 1R01AG081248-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
- **Principal Investigator:** DEBORAH G FINKEL
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $961,455
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-05-15 → 2029-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10885683

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10885683, Country, cohort, and gender disparities in the relationship between education and ADRD (1R01AG081248-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10885683. Licensed CC0.

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