COGNITIVE FUNCTIONING IN OLDER ADULTS: A LIFE SPAN HEALTH PRODUCTION FUNCTION APPROACH

Life-course theory postulates that our ultimate health outcomes are, in part, a response to an accumulation of advantages and disadvantages that begin early in life. Using 2012 Health and Retirement Study data on 9,221 older adults, we quantify how childhood factors contribute to “cognitive achievement”, directly and indirectly through their effects on mediating adult outcomes. We estimate “cognitive achievement” as the output of a production function, produced by childhood health and socioeconomic-status, adult socioeconomic achievements, health habits and pertinent demographics, adopting simultaneous equations mediation model to quantify the direct and indirect effects of childhood factors. We find that favorable childhood conditions significantly improve cognitive achievement, both directly and indirectly, mediated through education, income, and wealth. Our findings complement available research by showing that cognitive achievement is a function of childhood, adult and later-life factors. The pathways from childhood factors to cognitive achievement, however, could be more complex than previously reported.