The effect of intra-European migration on cognitive abilities in later life

The study raises the question about the long-term effect of intra-European migration on cognitive abilities in later life. In contrast to previous studies, not natives in the destination country but stayers in the origin country are used as reference group for migrants who moved to another European country at some point in life and are now growing old abroad. Using SHARE data and applying an instrumental variable approach in the first and fixed effects models in the second analytical step, the results indicate that migration turns out to have a negative long-term effect on the baseline level of cognitive abilities but that the process of cognitive decline does not differ significantly between migrants and stayers.