Own and Parents’ Schooling as Predictors of Cognition: Findings from the Longitudinal Chilean Social Protection Survey

A large literature on the predictive powers of own schooling, and increasingly one’s parents’ schooling on cognitive and physical health of aging individuals focuses on high-income countries. There is a paucity of studies for other contexts, including Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). We use data from the longitudinal Chilean Social Protection Survey to investigate associations between one’s own schooling, one’s parents’ schooling, childhood family economic status and cognition of aging adults in a country that differs substantially from the U.S. and from other LAC countries. We further test whether these associations differ by gender. Our estimates suggest that own schooling significantly predicts cognition and that parental (particularly maternal) schooling and childhood family socioeconomic status are significant predictors of cognition. We also find significant heterogeneities in associations between the respondents’ own schooling and cognition for women and men