ArticleJournal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD2021
Does Rural Living in Early Life Increase the Risk for Reduced Cognitive Functioning in Later Life?
Article in Journal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- Development and Validation of a Predictive Model for Identification of Cognitive Impairment Risk in Older Adults with Subjective Cognitive Decline：A Longitudinal Study.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2026Article
- Young adult urbanicity, late midlife neighborhood disadvantage, and cognitive functioning in community-dwelling older men.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026Article
- Early-life rural disadvantage and executive function in adulthood: The role of income and education.Journal of public health research · 2026Article
- Linking the 1940 U.S. Census to the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project: Novel Opportunity to Understand the Effects of Early-Life Residential Environment on Cognitive Aging.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2025Article
- Cognitive Trajectories and Associated Social and Behavioral Determinants Among Racial/Ethnic Minority Older Adults in the United States.The Gerontologist · 2024Article
- Childhood Community Disadvantage and MRI-Derived Structural Brain Integrity After Age 65 Years.JAMA network open · 2024Article
- Disparities in structural brain imaging in older adults from rural communities in Southern Nevada.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2024Article
- An investigation of psychoactive polypharmacy and related gender-differences in older adults with dementia: a retrospective cohort study.BMC geriatrics · 2023Article
- Global rural health disparities in Alzheimer's disease and related dementias: State of the science.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2023Review
- Residential trajectories across the life course and their association with cognitive functioning in later life.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Life course linkages between enriching early-life activities and later life cognition: Evidence from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Article
- Are Brain and Cognitive Reserve Shaped by Early Life Circumstances?Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Review
- Early Life Interventions Can Shape Aging.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2022Review
- Rural residence across the life course and late-life cognitive decline in KHANDLE: A causal inference study.Alzheimer's & dementia (Amsterdam, Netherlands)Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThere is a robust consensus, most recently articulated in the 2020 Lancet Commission, that the roots of dementia can be traced to early life, and that the path to prevention may start there as well. Indeed, a growing body of research demonstrates that early life disadvantage may influence the risk for later life dementia and cognitive decline. A still understudied risk, however, is early life rural residence, a plausible pathway given related economic and educational disadvantages, as well as associations between later life rural living and lower levels of cognitive functioning.
objectiveWe aim to examine whether living in rural environments during early life has long term implications for cognitive health in later life.
methodsWe employed the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which tracked 1 in every 3 high school graduates from the class of 1957, from infancy to ∼age 72. The data include a rich array of prospectively collected early life data, unique among existing studies, as well as later life measures of cognitive functioning.
resultsWe found a robust relationship between early life rural residence, especially living on a farm, and long-term risk for reduced cognitive performance on recall and fluency tasks. Controls for adolescent cognitive functioning, APOEɛ2 and APOEɛ4, as well as childhood and adult factors, ranging from early life socioeconomic conditions to later life health and rural and farm residency, did not alter the findings.
conclusionRural living in early life is an independent risk for lower levels of cognitive functioning in later life.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.