Exploring gender disparities in cognitive performance in later life: The role of social participation across European welfare regimes

This study advances cross-national research on gender and cognitive aging by introducing an index to identify individuals at risk of low cognitive performance, based on standardized tests of recall and verbal fluency. It examines gender disparities across welfare regimes, highlighting social integration, measured by a comprehensive index of close and extended social ties and activities, as a key modifiable factor. Using Wave 9 of the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we analyzed data from adults aged 50+ across 27 countries (n = 62,760), grouped into four welfare regimes. Bivariate statistics show that women had a significantly lower prevalence of below-average cognitive performance than men in the social-democratic and post-socialist regimes. No gender disparities were observed in the conservative and familialistic regimes. With respect to social integration, gender differences were relatively low in social-democratic and conservative regimes. By contrast, gender gaps emerged in familialistic and post-socialist regimes, where women were overrepresented at the lowest level of integration and more men reached higher levels. Multivariable logistic regression models show that after adjusting for social integration, women also had a cognitive advantage in the conservative and familialistic regimes, suggesting that social integration partially explains gender disparities in cognition, particularly in contexts characterized by traditional gender roles. These findings underscore the importance of the societal context and social integration in shaping cognitive aging for both women and men, and indicate potential for promoting cognition through social integration in several countries.