November 4, 2026
A new study underscores the importance of education in helping to protect against Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
The study, from researchers at the University of Southern California and other institutions, took advantage of a law enacted in Britain in 1972 that required young people to stay in school until age 16. Until that time, British teenagers could leave school at age 15. The law required that students in England, Scotland or Wales who were born on or after September 1, 1957, had to stay in school longer; those born just before the cutoff could still leave at age 15. As a result of the law, the share of students who stayed in school until at least age 16 increased by 14 percent.
Using data from the U.K. Biobank, a national registry of health data, the researchers tracked students born just before or just after the school reform cutoff date for nearly 50 years. Because of the strict cutoff date for staying in school, the students shared many of the same characteristics in terms of health, societal and environmental factors. The main difference was that those born after September 1 were required to attend school for an additional year.
Analysis revealed that the extra schooling reduced the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia decades later. The lower risk of dementia was particularly striking in those who had an increased genetic risk of developing dementia, including those who carried the APOE-E4 gene variant. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are among the first to show a causal relationship between more years of education and reduced dementia risk.
“We have known for a long time that people with more education are less likely to develop dementia, but it has been difficult to know whether education itself is responsible,” said Silvia Barcellos, the study’s lead author and a health economist at USC. “By taking advantage of this school reform, we can separate the effect of education from many of the other factors that differ across people. Our findings provide evidence that education itself can reduce dementia risk decades later.”
The researchers are planning to continue to follow the students as they grow older to gather additional information about how education may affect dementia risk. In the study, those who stayed in school longer tended to have better job opportunities and higher household incomes, which could make a healthy lifestyle more affordable. Those who stayed in school had a lower incidence of heart attacks and strokes, both risk factors for dementia. People with more education may also have acquired additional skills and qualifications that gave them access to more cognitively stimulating jobs. Such jobs have also been shown to lower the risk of developing dementia years down the road.
No matter how many years of schooling you’ve had, staying mentally engaged throughout life may be critical for helping to build a more resilient brain, a growing body of evidence suggests. While many factors determine who ultimately develops Alzheimer’s disease, lifelong learning activities like reading and writing, solving puzzles, or learning a new language may help to build up cognitive reserve, slowing declines in memory and thinking skills, and possibly girding the brain against the damage caused by diseases like Alzheimer’s.
By ALZinfo.org, The Alzheimer’s Information Site. Reviewed by Eric Schmidt, PhD, of The Fisher Center lab at The Rockefeller University.
Source: Silvia H. Barcellos, Leandro S. Carvalho, Kenneth M. Langa, Patrick Turley: “Education reduces dementia incidence and mitigates genetic risk.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, October 23, 2026
