One extra year of school in the 1950s is still protecting brains 50 years later

When the UK raised its school-leaving age from 15 to 16 in 1957, nobody was thinking about dementia. But researchers who followed more than 100,000 people in the UK Biobank found that the teenagers who stayed that one extra year went on to have measurably fewer cases of Alzheimer's disease and dementia in old age — nearly a full percentage point lower, a large effect for a condition with few defences. 'There are few preventative options out there, so even one could make a world of difference,' said lead researcher Silvia Barcellos of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

SDG 4 · Quality education — Mechanism: policy reform