ArticleThe journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences2026
Cross-national comparison of the association between adult child educational attainment and older parents' functional health.
Article in The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundMounting evidence points to the protective role of adult child education in older parents' health, including their risk of ADL and IADL difficulties. Yet, little is known whether this association varies cross-nationally due to contextual differences in intergenerational transfers, family dynamics, and other factors. This study examines the relationship between adult child education and parents' functional health outcomes across countries, using comparable population-based datasets.
methodsWe used harmonized data from seven population-based studies accessed through the Gateway to Global Aging Data. Our analytic sample included 88 683 adults 60 years and older from 24 countries. We estimated and meta-analyzed associations between adult child education and respondents' (parents') difficulty with basic and instrumental activities of daily living (ADL and IADLs), controlling for respondents' own education and other sociodemographic characteristics. We also considered heterogeneity across parent and child demographics (eg, parent gender, child gender).
resultsAcross all studies, each additional year of education averaged across adult children was associated with a 3% lower risk of difficulty with both ADLs (95% Confidence Interval [CI]: 0.95, 0.98) and IADLs (95% CI: 0.95, 0.98). Statistical heterogeneity appeared to be driven by one study (eg, I2 = 78.94% when the study was included vs I2 = 0.04% when excluded). Results suggest limited heterogeneity across demographic subgroups.
conclusion"Upward" intergenerational benefits of higher adult child education for parents' late-life ADL and IADL difficulties appear to be relatively consistent across a range of global settings. Further research is needed to uncover the mechanisms driving these cross-national associations.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.