The Gift of Time? School Starting Age and Mental Health

Dee, Thomas S.; Sievertsen, Hans Henrik

doi:10.3386/w21610

Cited by 22 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…It appears thus that children starting school at a younger age tend to display a lack of maturity in their behavior, as suggested by developmental psychologists (Whitebread, 2012). Our results are also consistent with Dee and Sievertsen (2018), who show that a one-year delay in the start of school reduces inattention and hyperactivity at age 7 years.…”

Section: Special Needs Diagnosis Onset and Typesupporting

confidence: 92%

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Summer‐born struggle: The effect of school starting age on health, education, and work

2020

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Children starting school older consistently exhibit better educational outcomes. In this paper, we underscore child development as a mechanism driving this effect. Using unique administrative data on health examinations, we study the causal effect of school starting age (SSA) on a child's probability of being diagnosed with special educational needs in early grades. Results show that children with higher SSA are less likely to develop behavioral problems and speech impediments, whereas learning disabilities, ADHD, and dyslexia/dyscalculia remain unaffected. Importantly, these effects only arise after primary school entry and are not due to preexisting health conditions. We also find that teachers tend to over‐refer relatively young children to special needs services, but this over‐referring behavior is not driving the results, which are based on psychologists' diagnoses. The SSA effect persists throughout compulsory schooling, resulting in higher test scores and better quality vocational training contracts. However, SSA does not affect employment, earnings, or disability insurance benefits at labor market entry.

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Section: Special Needs Diagnosis Onset and Typesupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Prior research shows some evidence that increases in SSA reduce children's risk of disability classification (Elder, ; Dhuey & Lipscomb, ) and improve measures of mental health (Dee & Sievertsen, ; Mühlenweg et al, ). We contribute to this literature along three dimensions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Summer‐born struggle: The effect of school starting age on health, education, and work

2020

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“…Children are required to start first grade the year they turn 7, though parents are able to apply for an exemption such that their child starts school a year earlier or later. Boys are about twice as likely to delay school start compared to girls (Dee and Sievertsen, 2015). Grade repetition is very rare; Simonsen et al (2015) show that on average less than 0.5 percent are retained or delayed for each grade level from grade 1 to 9.…”

Section: Family Childhood Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender gaps in the effects of childhood family environment: Do they persist into adulthood?

Brenøe

Lundberg

2018

European Economic Review

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S Gender Gaps in the Effects of Childhood Family ABSTRACT Gender Gaps in the Effects of Childhood Family Environment: Do They Persist into Adulthood?We examine the differential effects of family disadvantage on the education and adult labor market outcomes of men and women using high-quality administrative data on the entire population of Denmark born between 1966 and 1995. We link parental education and family structure during childhood to male-female and brother-sister differences in teenage outcomes, educational attainment, and adult earnings and employment. Our results are consistent with U.S. findings that boys benefit more from an advantageous family environment than do girls in terms of the behavior and grade-school outcomes. Father's education, which has not been examined in previous studies, is particularly important for sons. However, we find a very different pattern of parental influence on adult outcomes. The gender gaps in educational attainment, employment, and earnings are increasing in maternal education, benefiting daughters. Paternal education decreases the gender gaps in educational attainment (favoring sons) and labor market outcomes (favoring daughters). We conclude that differences in the behavior of school-aged boys and girls are a poor proxy for differences in skills that drive longer-term outcomes.JEL Classification: I20, J1, J2, J3

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“…See, for example:Bedard and Dhuey (2006);Datar (2006);Crawford et al (2007);Puhani and Weber (2007); McEwan and Shapiro (2008); Elder and Lubotsky (2009); Smith (2009); Crawford et al (2010); Sprietsma (2010); Kawaguchi (2011); Robertson (2011); Nam (2014); Lubotsky and Kaestner (2016); McAdams (2016); Landersø et al (2017); and Attar and Cohen-Zada (2017). 2 See Black et al (2011); Dhuey and Lipscomb (2010); Elder (2010); Elder and Lubotsky (2009); Evans et al (2010); Morrow et al (2012); andDee and Sievertsen (2017).3 Dobkin and Ferreira (2010) andBlack et al (2011) find little to no effect on academic attainment whereasBedard and Dhuey (2006),Kawaguchi (2011),Fredriksson and Ockert (2014),Cook and Kang (2016), and Pena (2017) find a positive effect of being older on academic attainment. However,Hemelt and Rosen (2016) andHurwitz et al (2015), find the opposite to be true.…”

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confidence: 99%

School Starting Age and Cognitive Development

Dhuey

Figlio

Karbownik³

et al. 2017

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We present evidence of a positive relationship between school starting age and children's cognitive development from age 6 to 15 using a regression discontinuity design and large-scale population-level birth and school data from the state of Florida. We estimate effects of being relatively old for grade (being born in September versus August) that are remarkably stablealways just around 0.2 SD difference in test scores -across a wide range of heterogeneous groups, based on maternal education, poverty at birth, race/ethnicity, birth weight, gestational age, and school quality. While the September-August difference in kindergarten readiness is dramatically different by subgroup, by the time students take their first exams, the heterogeneity in estimated effects effectively disappears. We document substantial variation in compensatory behaviors targeted towards young for grade children. While the more affluent families tend to redshirt their children, young for grade children from less affluent families are more likely to be retained in grades prior to testing. School district practices regarding retention and redshirting are correlated with improved outcomes for the groups less likely to use those remediation approaches (i.e., retention in the case of more-affluent families and redshirting in the case of less-affluent families.) We also study college and juvenile detention outcomes using administrative data from a large Florida school district, and show that being an older age at school entry increases children's college attainment and reduces the likelihood of being incarcerated for juvenile crime.

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The Gift of Time? School Starting Age and Mental Health

Cited by 22 publications

References 20 publications

Summer‐born struggle: The effect of school starting age on health, education, and work

Summer‐born struggle: The effect of school starting age on health, education, and work

Gender gaps in the effects of childhood family environment: Do they persist into adulthood?

School Starting Age and Cognitive Development

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