The Long-Term Effect of Age at School Entry on Competencies in Adulthood

Katja Görlitz, Merlin Penny () and Marcus Tamm
Additional contact information
Merlin Penny: Freie Universität Berlin

No 12157, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The previous literature has shown that children who enter school at a more advanced age outperform their younger classmates on competency tests taken between kindergarten and Grade 10. This study analyzes whether these effects of school starting age continue into adulthood. Based on data on math and language test scores for adults in Germany, the identification of the long-term causal effects exploits state and year variation in school entry regulations. The results show that there are no effects of school starting age (SSA) on competencies in math and text comprehension. However, the long-term SSA effect is sizable on receptive vocabulary.

Keywords: cognitive competencies; education; school starting age; instrumental variable estimates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J21 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2019-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - revised version published as 'The long-term effect of age at school entry on cognitive competencies in adulthood' in: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2022, 194, 91 - 104

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp12157.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Long-Term Effect of Age at School Entry on Competencies in Adulthood (2019)
Working Paper: The long-term effect of age at school entry on competencies in adulthood (2019)
Working Paper: The long-term effect of age at school entry on competencies in adulthood (2019)
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:iza:izadps:dp12157

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().