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When Should Children Start School?

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  • Dionissi Aliprantis

Abstract

This paper studies causal effects informative for deciding the age when children should start kindergarten. I present evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) that standard instrumental variable strategies do not identify effects of delaying kindergarten entry for any subpopulation of interest. I propose and implement a new strategy for identifying individual-level education production function parameters. Estimates indicate that there can be decreasing and even negative returns to relative age: For the oldest children in a cohort, educational achievement in third grade decreases as their age relative to that of their classmates increases.

Suggested Citation

  • Dionissi Aliprantis, 2014. "When Should Children Start School?," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 8(4), pages 481-536.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jhucap:doi:10.1086/679109
    DOI: 10.1086/679109
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    Cited by:

    1. Herbst, Mikołaj & Strawiński, Paweł, 2016. "Early effects of an early start: Evidence from lowering the school starting age in Poland," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 256-271.
    2. Thomas S. Dee & Hans Henrik Sievertsen, 2018. "The gift of time? School starting age and mental health," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(5), pages 781-802, May.
    3. Tony Beatton & Michael P. Kidd & Anthony Niu & Francis Vella, 2023. "Age of Starting School, Academic Performance, and the Impact of Non‐Compliance: An Experiment within an Experiment, Evidence from Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 99(325), pages 175-206, June.
    4. Suziedelyte, Agne & Zhu, Anna, 2015. "Does early schooling narrow outcome gaps for advantaged and disadvantaged children?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 76-88.

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