# Long-term Effects of Educational Investments on Cognitive Health

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA · 2024 · $917,149

## Abstract

Project Summary
One of the most robust findings in dementia research is that high educational attainment lowers the risk of
Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD); a condition expected to affect more than 150 million people
by 2050. Yet, because of large variability in the content and quality of K-12 and college education by place, race,
and socioeconomic status, educational experiences may better explain differences in late-life cognitive health.
Evidence, however, is scarce on the causal effects of specific educational experiences on late-life cognition, and
when they matter most. This is largely due to limited high-quality data spanning sufficient time to describe the
educational experiences of adults old enough to exhibit cognitive decline, and unobserved confounders in school
experiences. The proposed study will overcome the limitations of prior studies and expand the literature by
constructing a new dataset, linking it to multiple surveys, and using rigorous causal inference methods.
Specifically, we will leverage a natural experiment that provided variation in K-12 and college educational
experiences in the 1950s-60s to evaluate the causal effects of educational content and quality on the cognitive
function of older adults today. The natural experiment is The National Defense Education Act (NDEA), a federal
program implemented between 1958 and 1964 focused on improving students' mathematical and scientific skills.
NDEA provided states with substantial resources 1) to improve science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM) and foreign-language education in K-12 and 2) provided college loans for low-income
students majoring in these fields. Funding levels varied over time by states, birth cohorts, and subjects based on
poverty levels and population size. This enables us to use a two stage difference-in-differences framework to
study causal effects of educational experiences on cognitive health for birth cohorts who were differently exposed
to NDEA and are now sufficiently old to exhibit symptoms of cognitive decline. Using historical education data,
and several longitudinal surveys on health, education, and economic outcomes, we will: 1) document the NDEA's
funding allotments and its effect on K-12 and/or college experiences, 2) estimate the causal effects of educational
experiences during K-12 or/and college on cognitive aging, 3) identify causal pathways mediating the total effect
of educational experiences on cognitive health, and 4) examine whether long-term effects from Aims 2 and 3
vary by sex, race, geography, childhood socio-economic status, and genetic pre-disposition for ADRD and its risk
factors. This study will have a high impact because it creates new data on educational experiences linkable to
existing, but rarely combined, surveys to address one of today's costliest health concerns, ADRD. These
approaches and findings will help provide the first causal evidence of how educational experiences impact
cognitive ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10982293
- **Project number:** 1R01AG079967-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
- **Principal Investigator:** Tadeja Gracner
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $917,149
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-08-01 → 2029-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10982293

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10982293, Long-term Effects of Educational Investments on Cognitive Health (1R01AG079967-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10982293. Licensed CC0.

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