Abstract
Drawing on insights from the life course perspective, this symposium examines how social inequalities originating in childhood have implications for cognitive aging decades later. The papers draw from four large, longitudinal population studies that have repeated measures of adult cognitive function: the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), the National Survey of Midlife in the U.S. (MIDUS), the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), and the Vietnam Era Twin Study of Aging (VETSA). The first two papers focus on personal relationships in childhood. Using data from CHARLS, the first paper provides evidence that better quality relationships with friends and parents in childhood is a robust predictor of cognition in middle and later life. The second paper, using MIDUS, finds that linkages between parenting practices and midlife cognition differ for low-SES versus high-SES families. The second two papers address the confluence of risk and protective factors across ecological domains in childhood. Using data from VETSA, the third paper demonstrates an interaction between rural residence and childhood socioeconomic status (SES), suggesting that the availability of resources (based on geographic context) and accessibility of resources (based on family SES) in childhood jointly influence later life cognition. The fourth paper uses a latent class approach with data from the WLS and finds that clusters of advantage/disadvantage across geographic setting, school quality, and family SES are associated with memory and language/executive functioning at age 65. Together, these papers suggest the importance of better specifying childhood risk and protection within life course epidemiological research on cognitive aging.