Age and Cognitive Skills: Use It or Lose It

TL;DR

This study uses longitudinal data to show that cognitive skills in adults generally improve into their forties, with declines mainly among those with lower skill usage, challenging the notion of early decline.

Contribution

It provides the first longitudinal estimates of age-skill profiles, highlighting the importance of skill usage in maintaining cognitive abilities over the lifespan.

Findings

Skills increase into the forties after correction for measurement error

Skills decline at older ages mainly among low-usage individuals

Higher-educated and white-collar workers maintain or improve skills beyond their forties

Abstract

Cross-sectional age-skill profiles suggest that workers' cognitive skills start declining by their thirties if not earlier. If accurate, such age-driven skill losses pose a major threat to the human capital of societies with rapidly aging populations. We estimate actual age-skill profiles from individual changes in skills at different ages. We use the unique German longitudinal component of the Programme of the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC-L) that retested a large representative sample of adults after 3.5 years. Two main results emerge. First, correcting for measurement error, average skills increase into the forties before decreasing slightly in literacy and more strongly in numeracy. Second, skills decline at older ages only for those with below-average skill usage. White-collar and higher-educated workers with above-average usage show increasing skills even beyond their forties. Women have larger skill losses at older age, particularly in numeracy.