Male-Female Gap in Disability Converges With Higher Educational Attainment for Later-Born

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Working Paper Number: SEHSD-WP2026-15

Research Working Paper presented at the 2026 Population Association of America conference in St. Louis. Higher levels of educational attainment have been found to be inversely related to disability in older adults. As educational attainment has increased from one generation to the next, how have disability rates among older adults changed? This paper focuses on adults ages 65-69 in fifteen years of American Community Survey data to measure the relationship between educational attainment and disability. In addition to general trends, a cohort-based analysis is used to determine if the magnitude of this effect has varied for later-born cohorts. Disparities in disability by sex for older adults may also change with successive birth cohorts as the composition and effect size of education on disability change. Regression results are incorporated into a Fairlie decomposition analysis. The discrete effect of changing educational composition is explored across these cohorts by sex, as well as changes to the effect size of educational attainment on disability prevalence across cohorts.

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