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Children of persons with Alzheimer disease (AD), as a group, face an increased risk of developing AD. Many of them, throughout their adult lives, seek input on how to reduce their chances of one day suffering their parent's fate. We examine the state of knowledge with respect to risk and protective factors for AD and recommend a research agenda with special emphasis on AD offspring.

In this paper, we model gender differences in cognitive ability in China using a new sample of middle-aged and older Chinese respondents. Modeled after the American Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the CHARLS Pilot survey respondents are 45 years and older in two quite distinct provinces--Zhejiang, a high-growth industrialized province on the East Coast, and Gansu, a largely agricultural and poor province in the West--in a sense new and old China. Our cognition measures proxy for two different dimensions of adult cognition--episodic memory and intact mental status. On both measures, Chinese women score much lower than do Chinese men, a gender difference that grows among older Chinese cohorts. We relate both these cognition scores to schooling, urban residence, family and community levels of economic resources, and height. We find that cognition is more closely related to mean community resources than to family resources, especially for women, suggesting that in traditional poor Chinese communities there are strong economic incentives to favor boys at the expense of girls. We also find that these gender differences in cognitive ability have been steadily decreasing across birth cohorts as the economy of China grew rapidly. Among cohorts of young adults in China, there is no longer any gender disparity in cognitive ability. This parallels the situation in the United States where cognition scores of adult women actually exceed those of adult men. (Contains 1 figure, 9 tables, and 7 footnotes.)

Using Bowen and Bok's data from 23 selective colleges, we fit multilevel logit models to test two hypotheses with implications for affirmative action and group differences in attainment of science, math, or engineering (SME) degrees. Hypothesis 1, that differences in precollege academic preparation will explain later SME graduation disparities, was fully supported with respect to the outcome gap between Whites and underrepresented minorities, partially supported for that between Asians and underrepresented minorities, and between men and women. Hypothesis 2, that college selectivity, after accounting for student characteristics, will be positively associated with SME persistence, was not supported. We demonstrate that the significance of the selectivity effect is overestimated when unilevel models are used. Admission officials are advised to carefully consider the relative academic preparedness of science-interested students, and such students choosing among colleges are advised to compare their academic qualifications to those of successful science students at each institution.

In this paper, we model gender differences in cognitive ability in China using a new sample of middle-aged and older Chinese respondents. Modeled after the American Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the CHARLS Pilot survey respondents are 45 years and older in two quite distinct provinces--Zhejiang, a high-growth industrialized province on the East Coast, and Gansu, a largely agricultural and poor province in the West--in a sense new and old China. Our cognition measures proxy for two different dimensions of adult cognition--episodic memory and intact mental status. On both measures, Chinese women score much lower than do Chinese men, a gender difference that grows among older Chinese cohorts. We relate both these cognition scores to schooling, urban residence, family and community levels of economic resources, and height. We find that cognition is more closely related to mean community resources than to family resources, especially for women, suggesting that in traditional poor Chinese communities there are strong economic incentives to favor boys at the expense of girls. We also find that these gender differences in cognitive ability have been steadily decreasing across birth cohorts as the economy of China grew rapidly. Among cohorts of young adults in China, there is no longer any gender disparity in cognitive ability. This parallels the situation in the United States where cognition scores of adult women actually exceed those of adult men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]