High School Curriculum and Cognitive Function in the Eighth Decade of Life

Abstract

Introduction: Formal educational attainment, or years of schooling, has a well-established positive effect on cognitive health across the life course. We hypothesized that the content and difficulty of the curriculum influence this relationship, such that more challenging curricula in high school lead to higher levels of socioeconomic attainment in adulthood and, in turn, to better cognitive outcomes in older adulthood. Methods: We estimated multilevel structural equation models (MSEMs) in data from 2,405 individuals who attended one of 1,312 US high schools in 1960 and participated in the Project Talent Aging Study in 2018. Results: A college preparatory curriculum and a greater number of semesters of math and science in high school were positively related to word recall and verbal fluency at an average age of 75. Effects were robust to controlling for adolescent cognitive ability, academic performance, socioeconomic background, and school characteristics. Discussion: We discuss the implications of these findings for educational policy.