Does the transition into daylight saving time affect students’ performance?

Stefanie P. Herber, Johanna Sophie Quis and Guido Heineck

Economics of Education Review, 2017, vol. 61, issue C, 130-139

Abstract: We use international assessment data on more than 22,000 students from six European countries to investigate whether the transition into daylight saving time affects elementary students’ performance in low-stakes tests in the week after the time change. Exploiting the time shift as a natural experiment, we find that the effect of changing the clock is very small in magnitude and not statistically significant in all three testing areas (math, science, and reading). Therefore, our results challenge the prevailing public opinion that daylight saving time should be abandoned because of its detrimental effects on schoolchildren’s performance.

Keywords: Daylight saving time; School achievement tests; Cognitive performance; Natural experiment; Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS); Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D04 H41 I20 I29 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775715300868
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Does the transition into daylight saving time affect students' performance? (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:61:y:2017:i:c:p:130-139

DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2017.07.002

Access Statistics for this article

Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn

More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().