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RSVP to Lina Lopez (lina.lopez@uci.edu) to watch in person in SSPA 3132 with lunch provided.
 
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Although education is a key determinant of cognitive function, its role in determining Black-White disparities in cognitive function is unclear. This may be due, in part, to data limitations that have made it difficult to account for systemic educational inequities in the U.S. South experienced by older adults. In this talk, Walsemann will present results from her ongoing projects funded by the NIA and the Alzheimer’s Association. These projects aim to determine how 1) educational inequities during the Jim Crow South and 2) the timing of state-level school desegregation in the post-Brown South shape Black-White disparities in cognitive function among older adults. To address her aims, she links historical state-level data on school attendance, school term length, school desegregation, and the number of active desegregation court cases available for the 17 southern states to the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative, longitudinal study of U.S. adults over age 50.