ArticleJournal of epidemiology and community health2026
Cumulative poverty across early adulthood and midlife cognition: findings from the national longitudinal survey of youth.
Article in Journal of epidemiology and community health, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Lifetime Patterns of Earned Income Tax Credit Eligibility and Cognition: A Sequence Analysis Approach.American journal of preventive medicine · 2026Article
- Income Volatility During Early to Mid-adulthood and 10-year Memory Decline in a Longitudinal Synthetic Cohort.Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
introductionPrior studies have observed associations between poverty measured at single or across diffuse periods of the life course and cognitive function measured in later life. Few studies examine the relationship between cumulative poverty exposure and midlife cognition or address confounding of this relationship by early-life cognitive ability.
methodsTo estimate the effect of cumulative poverty with midlife cognitive function, we analysed data from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 participants with ≥3 family income measures over a 20-year period (1990-2010) who completed the modified Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status when ~48 years of age (N=2923). We defined participants' cumulative poverty status by the proportion of their family income measures <200% of the Federal Poverty Limit: 0 (never), <1/3 but >0 (sometimes), ≥1/3 but less than all (often) and all (always). Armed Forces Qualification Test score defined early-life cognitive ability. We used linear regression models to examine the association between cumulative poverty and sample-standardised z-scores for memory, attention and global cognitive function.
resultsOverall, 37.9% of participants were never, 26.6% were sometimes, 27.5% were often and 8.0% were always in poverty. In fully adjusted models and relative to participants never in poverty, those often (beta: -0.13; 95% CI -0.23 to -0.04) and always (beta: -0.37; 95% CI -0.53 to -0.22) in poverty had lower z-scores for midlife global cognitive function. Likewise, their z-scores were lower for midlife memory function.
conclusionsLonger durations of poverty exposure may be more detrimental for midlife cognition. This relationship was not fully explained by early-life cognitive ability.
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