Lifecourse Socioeconomic Status and Cognitive Performance Among Midlife Latina Women in a California Agricultural Region

Studies rigorously evaluating the relationship between time-varying lifecourse socio-economic status (SES) and cognitive aging primarily focus on non-Hispanic White adults with relatively high SES. We used data from the CHAMACOS Maternal Cognition Study (2022-2024), which included middle-aged, primarily Latina women who experienced relatively low lifecourse SES (n = 519). Participants provided information on early childhood (parental education), mid to late childhood (respondent education), and midlife SES (current poverty level), and completed the SOL-INCA neurocognitive assessment, yielding global and domain-specific cognitive performance z-scores. We estimated marginal structural models and evaluated evidence against common lifecourse models (accumulation, critical/sensitive periods, pathways). The association between parental education and midlife cognitive scores was null after accounting for respondent education and midlife poverty. Compared to those who completed primary school or less, those who completed any secondary school (e.g., ${\beta}_{global\ cognition}$: 0.27, 95% Confidence Interval [CI]: 0.15, 0.39) or high school or above (e.g.,${\beta}_{global\ cognition}$: 0.61, 95% CI: 0.47, 0.75) had higher cognitive z-scores, accounting for both parental education and midlife poverty. Associations between midlife poverty and cognitive z-scores were of smaller magnitude. Our results point to the importance of education for midlife cognition among a subgroup of individuals historically excluded from cognitive aging research.