Disentangling the channels from birthdate to educational attainment

Luís Martins and Manuel Pereira

Working Papers from Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department

Abstract: This paper uses a large multi-country database with data from the OECD PISA program to disentangle the effects of birthdate on educational performance. As far as age effects are concerned, we conclude that children are disadvantaged because they are the youngest in class (relative age effect), not because they are young per se. Our findings go against delaying mandatory school entry as a general policy, as there is no gain from a rise in entry age - keeping age differences among students constant - to make up for the shortening of length of schooling. This evidence that postponing school entry postpones learning is more marked for children belonging to disadvantaged households. In contrast, the relative age effect does not interact with family background, and remains stable across school entry age cohorts. The size of this effect, measured at the age 15 is not large, but its interaction with early grade retention and tracking may enhance long-term effects. Finally, we do not detect an association between birthdate and achievement originating in unobservable characteristics of students.

JEL-codes: E21 E60 F40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bportugal.pt/sites/default/files/anexos/papers/wp201706_1.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Disentangling the channels from birthdate to educational attainment (2017)
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:ptu:wpaper:w201706

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by DEE-NTD ().