Season of Birth and Later Outcomes: Old Questions, New Answers

Abstract

Season of birth is associated with later outcomes; what drives this association remains unclear. We consider a new explanation: variation in maternal characteristics. We document large changes in maternal characteristics for births throughout the year; winter births are disproportionally realized by teenagers and the unmarried. Family background controls explain nearly half of season-of-birth’s relation to adult outcomes. Seasonality in maternal characteristics is driven by women trying to conceive; we find no seasonality among unwanted births. Prior seasonality-in-fertility research focuses on conditions at conception; here expected conditions at birth drive variation in maternal characteristics while conditions at conception are unimportant.

The Long‐Term Effects of Early Track Choice

“…This problem may be addressed by the school system if it allows for possibilities to revise initial choices at a later stage, through providing students whose potential is higher (or lower) than initially projected with opportunities to switch tracks. 24 The …gures reveal strong seasonal e¤ects, with children born in April or May generally outperforming children born in January, similar to those documented by Buckles and Hungerman (2012). Note that, as emphasized in Section 3, seasonal e¤ects do not pose a threat to our identi…cation strategy as long as it is random whether a woman gives birth just before or just after the school entry cut-o¤ date July 1.…”

“…This literature has found such direct e¤ects of age of school entry on long-run (prime age) earnings or educational attainment to be either non-existent or positive. 9 None of the papers we have reviewed …nds a negative e¤ect of being older at school entry on short-or longer term outcomes-apart from the mechanical e¤ect that is instigated through individuals who are older at school entry also being older at labor market entry, so that they have, at any given age, accumulated less labor market experience than individuals who are younger at school entry. 10 We eliminate this experience e¤ect using various methods (see Section 5.2 for details), so that our estimates of the impact of track assignment in middle school on wages are not a¤ected by this mechanism.…”

Left behind by birth month

“…For example, if highly educated parents time the birth to a specific season, children born this season may outperform their peers due to parental resources rather than age differences in class. Buckles and Hungerman (2013) find strong evidence on US data for correlation between birth month and parental characteristics that are likely to affect a number of outcomes. In Section 5 Data, I will investigate this directly by investigating parent characteristics across the child's birth month.…”

The effects of compulsory military service exemption on education and labor market outcomes: Evidence from a natural experiment

“…The cutoff date separates the ones born in December from those born in January. It is well-known that education and labor income is correlated with season of birth not only through the potential interactions between season of birth and compulsory schooling laws [see, e.g., Angrist and Krueger (1991)], but also through the fact that children born toward the end of the year are much more likely to have wealthier and better-educated parents than children born early in the year [Bound, Jaeger, and Baker (1995), Buckles and Hungerman (2013)]. In a companion paper [Torun and Tumen (2015)], we clearly document the relevance of this concern for micro-level data sets in Turkey.…”