JESS Seminar: Parental Love is Not Blind

In many countries parents can choose whether their children start elementary school one year earlier. Like many other educational decisions, this choice has lasting consequences that can depend on each child’s characteristics. Which children are sent to school early? How are they affected by this decision? We propose a novel methodology to identify the sign and strength of selection. We exploit a feature of the Italian education system: only children born between January and April can start elementary school one year early. We use data on standardized tests taken by all students in Italy. We find robust evidence of positive selection: early starters would have obtained scores 0.2 standard deviations higher than the average tudent, had they started regularly.