Working Paper: NBER ID: w15236
Authors: Rashmi Barua; Kevin Lang
Abstract: Partly in response to increased testing and accountability, states and districts have been raising the minimum school entry age, but existing studies show mixed results regarding the effects of entry age. These studies may be severely biased because they violate the monotonicity assumption needed for LATE. We propose an instrument not subject to this bias and show no effect on the educational attainment of children born in the fourth quarter of moving from a December 31 to an earlier cutoff. We then estimate a structural model of optimal entry age that reconciles the different IV estimates including ours. We find that one standard instrument is badly biased but that the other diverges from ours because it estimates a different LATE. We also find that an early entry age cutoff that is applied loosely (as in the 1950s) is beneficial but one that is strictly enforced is not.
Keywords: school entry age; educational attainment; instrumental variables; quarter of birth; policy implications
JEL Codes: C21; I20; J24
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| strict enforcement of entry age laws (K40) | educational attainment (I21) |
| loose application of early entry age cutoff (I21) | educational attainment (I21) |
| school entry cutoff date (I21) | educational outcomes of children not constrained by the law (I24) |
| school entry age (I21) | educational attainment (I21) |
| quarter of birth (J13) | educational attainment (I21) |