Education and Dementia Risk: Results From the Aging Demographics and Memory Study

This study examined importance of education on dementia risk among older adults. It explored to what extent this relationship represents an independent effect of education on dementia risk. A cross-sectional sample of adults age 70 years or older was selected from the Aging Demographics and Memory Study, a supplement to the Health and Retirement Study, to examine the association between education and dementia risk and to mitigate the possibility of self-selection bias (unobserved variable bias) in explaining this correlation. An identification strategy using parental and sibling characteristics as instrumental variables for education was used to remove bias from the estimate of education parameter's effect on dementia risk. The association between education and dementia risk was observed after accounting for self-selection bias. Results from the two-stage ordered logit model suggest that the impact of education on dementia risk is not an artifact but rather the observed association between education and dementia incidence has a causal component.