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Demography

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01.04.2014

Does Education Improve Cognitive Performance Four Decades After School Completion?

verfasst von: Nicole Schneeweis, Vegard Skirbekk, Rudolf Winter-Ebmer

Erschienen in: Demography | Ausgabe 2/2014

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Abstract

We study the effect of secondary education on cognitive performance toward the end of working age. We exploit the exogenous variation in years of schooling arising from compulsory schooling reforms implemented in six European countries during the 1950s and 1960s. Using data of individuals, approximately age 60, from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we assess the causal effect of education on memory, fluency, numeracy, and orientation-to-date. Furthermore, we study education effects on cognitive decline. We find a positive impact of schooling on memory scores. One year of education increases the memory score approximately four decades later by about 0.2, which amounts to 10 % of a standard deviation. Furthermore, we find some evidence for a protective effect of schooling on cognitive decline in terms of verbal fluency.

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A U.S. nun study has shown that low linguistic ability at age 22 was a strong predictor of poor cognitive function and Alzheimer’s disease in late life (Snowdon and Kemper 1996).

The vector X _ickt includes a female dummy variable and an indicator variable for whether a person was born abroad and migrated before age 5. It contains indicators for the interview year and control variables for the quality of the interview session (the interviewer’s perception of whether something may have impaired the respondent’s performance on the tests and whether another person was present during the interview) in Eq. (1) and an indicator for the first interview year, control variables for the quality of both interview sessions, and the number of months between the two interviews in Eq. (2). Note that all results are robust to adding the control variables for the quality of the interview session.

We restrict the analysis to individuals born between 1939 and 1956: these individuals are between 47 and 73 years old at the time of the interviews. We focus on six European countries. Other countries participating in SHARE have also reformed their education systems, but these other reforms took place either too early or too late for our sampling period. In Sweden, compulsory schooling has been extended gradually in Swedish municipalities beginning in the 1960s, but SHARE does not provide detailed information about the municipalities.

Although the survey was targeted at individuals aged 50+ only, cohabiting partners in the same household were interviewed even if they were younger at the time of the interview.

Approximately 15 % of these respondents participated in all three waves, 23 % participated in two waves, and 62 % participated only once. The large number of individuals who participated only once is due to the fact that many countries extended the sample significantly in Wave 4. Furthermore, the Czech Republic joined the survey in Wave 2.

We cluster the standard errors at the individual level because both the level and the slope analysis are based on multiple observations per individual. Also note that the slope analysis is based on multiple observations if individuals participated in all three waves.

We further corrected the years of education variable. In all waves, the respondents were asked about their detailed (further and higher) educational qualifications. Based on these additional variables, we calculated their required years of education according to country-specific conversion tables. We replaced years of education with the required years of education in cases where the years of education were missing, zero, or implausibly low.

The distribution of orientation to date is uneven and strongly skewed to the right (skewness = –4.99). Numeracy is also distributed right-tailed (skewness = –0.48.)

The first-stage coefficients are similar in magnitude to those obtained in other studies investigating compulsory schooling laws in various European countries (e.g., Brunello et al. 2009, 2011, 2013; Fort et al. 2011).

The bottom rows in Table 5 give p values of regression-based F statistics and indicate whether years of education can be treated as exogenous. These test statistics are based on the regressions obtained with the baseline sample and sample 5.

We estimated IV-probit models for good numeracy and good orientation. The marginal effects of these models are very similar to those of the linear probability models and are not statistically significant.

We find significant coefficients neither when the numeracy score is treated as a continuous variable nor when the cutoff for the binary indicator is lower or higher.

Using the other samples, we find similar results with rising magnitudes and better precision with decreasing sample size. For example, using sample 5, the coefficients for delayed memory are approximately 0.3 and are statistically significant for females (at the 5 % level).

First-stage estimates are 0.32 for males and 0.29 for females.

The number of books at home is often used as proxy variable for family socioeconomic background.

The first-stage coefficients are 0.27 for individuals with few books and 0.34 for individuals with many books at home.

We have to include the real compulsory schooling reforms in the regressions as well because for some birth cohorts, the real compulsory schooling level and the placebo compulsory schooling level overlap.

See Bonsang et al. (2012) or Bingley and Martinello (2011) for a discussion of the relationship between retirement and cognitive functioning.

For a detailed analysis on the effects of education on fertility using compulsory schooling reforms in several European countries, see Fort et al. (2011).

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Titel: Does Education Improve Cognitive Performance Four Decades After School Completion?
verfasst von: Nicole Schneeweis
Vegard Skirbekk
Rudolf Winter-Ebmer
Publikationsdatum: 01.04.2014
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Demography / Ausgabe 2/2014
Print ISSN: 0070-3370
Elektronische ISSN: 1533-7790
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-014-0281-1

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