Research suggests link between low-quality education, dementia

Going to school in a state with a poorer quality of education could increase a person’s risk of developing dementia.

by Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech | Feb. 14, 2023

An estimated 6.5 million Americans living with dementia are cared for by family members but require frequent hospital visits. Dementia can sneak up on families because its sufferers may be adept at covering lapses early on, or longer if their spouses are there to compensate. AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

Story at a glance

Researchers looked at education levels and rates of dementia, but a new study published in JAMA Neurology looks at the quality of a person’s education and their risk of developing the condition.

Researchers from a bevy of California institutions and Columbia University found a connection between poor education quality and a greater risk of developing dementia.

Researchers looked at 23 years’ worth of health data on Kaiser Permanente Northern California members for the study.

Children who have receive poor-quality education have a higher risk of developing dementia later in life, a new study suggests.

The study recently published in JAMA Neurology looks at more than 20 years’ worth of data gathered on members of the health care organization Kaiser Permanente Northern California.

Researchers studied the health records of 20,778 adults 65 years old or older, parsing through data to track dementia diagnoses and the educational background of those diagnosed with the condition.

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Most of the patients used in the study (81.2 percent), identified as white, while 18.8 percent said they were Black. More than half — 56.5 percent to be exact — said they were women, while 43.5 percent said they were men.

Researchers determined state education quality by looking at teacher-to-student ratio, attendance rate and term length. After taking those factors into account, researchers placed state school systems into three different quality categories.

As a result, researchers found that adults who went to school in states with a higher quality of education had a lower risk of developing dementia later in life.

The study also found that Black Americans had a higher risk of being exposed to lower quality education, which may contribute to existing dementia disparities.

Between 76.2 percent and 86.1 percent of Black patients attended a school that fell into the lowest educational quality group compared to 20.8 to 23.3 percent of white patients, the study shows.

Black Americans are twice as likely to have Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia compared to White Americans, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

And this disparity can be partially blamed on societal factors like weaker access to health care, as well as ethnic and cultural bias in dementia screening and assessment tools.

Researchers believe that their study findings highlight the importance of investing in state education.

“These findings have important policy relevance, suggesting that state-level investments to improve educational quality matter,” the study reads. “Such policy considerations should also address systemic factors that may contribute to unequal distribution of investments among racial and ethnic minority groups to help to address dementia disparities.”