A nationwide study revealed an unexpected reversal of trends: The American 'Baby Boomer' generation scored lower in large-scale cognitive testing than members of older generations.
The cognitive health of adults aged 50 or older has traditionally improved from one generation to another. American Baby Boomers mark the first reversal in that trend: The generation born between 1948 and 1959 are showing unexpectedly lower cognitive function in their 60s and early 70s than their predecessors.
Hui Zheng, lead author of a nationwide study published this summer in Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences, surveyed 30,191 American participants of the 1996–2014 Health and Retirement Study and found a decline in cognitive functioning in all groups of Boomers regardless of gender, race, education or income level.
Between 1996 and 2014, the researchers administered a 35-point cognitive test every two years to people over 51 years old. Participants completed cognitive screens in which they performed various task such as recalling words they had heard earlier, counting down from 100 by 7s, and naming objects they were shown.
Findings showed that average cognition scores of adults aged 50 and older increased from generation to generation, beginning with the Greatest Generation (b. 1890-1923) and peaking among War Babies (b. 1942-1947). Scores began to decline in the early Baby Boomers (b. 1948-1953) and decreased further in the mid Baby Boomers (b. 1954-1959).
The researchers found slightly lower declines among the wealthiest and most highly educated of the cohort, but the differences weren’t notable enough to offset that Boomers’ cognitive health sets them apart.
“Baby boomers already start having lower cognition scores than earlier generations at age 50 to 54,” Zheng, a professor of sociology at Ohio State University, said in a news release. “It is shocking to see this decline in cognitive functioning among Baby Boomers after generations of increases in test scores.”
Often, poor cognitive conditions in adulthood are linked to childhood health and lifestyle factors, but Zheng said Boomers’ childhood health was as good as or better than previous generations and that they generally came from families of higher socioeconomic status with higher levels of education, which can impact cognitive health in the long run.
Zheng added that he did not expect to find that these factors would have little to no bearing on test performance within the Boomer group: “The decline in cognitive functioning that we’re seeing does not come from poorer childhood conditions,” Zheng said. “What was most surprising to me is that this decline is seen in all groups: men and women, across all races and ethnicities and across all education, income and wealth levels … The declines were only slightly lower among the wealthiest and most highly educated.”
Zheng’s team also compared cognition scores within each age group across generations so that scores were not skewed by older people who tend to have poorer cognition. Even in this analysis, Boomers scored lowest as a group.
What Factors Are Affecting Boomer Brain Health?
Zheng’s research linked Boomers’ lower cognitive test scores to higher levels of self-reported depression, physical inactivity and obesity, loneliness and less likelihood of being married.
Lower wealth, living without a spouse, being married more than once in their lives, having psychiatric problems and physical health issues including cardiovascular risk factors like strokes, hypertension, heart disease and diabetes are all Alzheimer’s and dementia risk factors, and were all also found by Zheng to be associated with lower cognitive function among Boomer study participants.
“If it weren’t for their better childhood health, more favorable family background, more years of education and higher likelihood of having a white-collar occupation, baby boomers would have even worse cognitive functioning,” he said.
While the prevalence of dementia has declined recently in the U.S., Zheng said the data suggests this trend may reverse in the decades to come.
Is it a surprise? The striving for decades to be masters of the universe, the rebellion that changed our cultural mores, the vicious ageism they introduced (rob Butler coined the term in 1969 in response) – perhaps now they are old themselves they’re reaping the harvest of their own attitudes and actions?
I wonder if diet played a part. These were children of the TV Dinner era; of fast foods and lots of sweets and every meal “quick and easy”.
Amen! I forgot about their aluminum tv dinners til I read this! My mom was born in 1955 and grew up on poor gov commodities in a house with 6 kids and a 5x divorced mom (she was a mess LOL) So fake cheese, garbage peanut butter, lots of garbage food
To Roberta Becker. Interesting idea, which could be tested in a country like South Africa, where the advent of TV was much later (1976) and TV dinners were home cooked but eaten while sitting around the TV. Folding single tables were common.
They were the generation of canned goods and great new inventions for faster meals, lots of aluminum directly going into their diet – and now aluminum has finally been linked to creating plaque on the brain, which damages different parts of cognitive responses and memory! Smokers, aluminum saturates your cig paper, so stop smoking!
Figi water has proven to break up plaque and flush it from the system! A study showed 1 liter a day for 3 weeks straight helped remove almost or all plaque on test subjects brains. The silica in the water does it. Check it out! I’m drinking it from now on. My mom has very severe dementia, this is why I’m reading these articles.