McEwan, Patrick J., and Joseph S. Shapiro. 2008. “The Benefits of Delayed Primary School Enrollment: Discontinuity Estimates Using Exact Birth Dates.” Journal of Human Resources 43(1): 1–29.
The paper estimates the effect of delayed school enrollment on student outcomes, using administrative data on Chilean students that include exact birth dates. Regression-discontinuity estimates, based on enrollment cutoffs, show that a one-year delay decreases the probability of repeating first grade by two percentage points, and increases fourth and eighth grade test scores by more than 0.3 standard deviations, with larger effects for boys. The paper concludes with implications for enrollment age policy.
Patrick J. McEwan is an associate professor of economics at Wellesley College. Joseph S. Shapiro is a graduate student in the Department of Economics at MIT. The authors thank Amanda Brewster, Deon Filmer, Jeff Marshall, Emiliana Vegas, Gaston Yalonetzky, two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at the World Bank, Washington University, Michigan State, and Stanford for providing helpful comments. This research received partial financial support from the World Bank. The views expressed herein are those of the authors. The SIMCE and JUNAEB data are available with the permission of Chile’s Ministry of Education and JUNAEB, respectively. Conditional on receiving permission, the data set used in the article can be obtained beginning August 2008 through July 2011 from Patrick McEwan, Wellesley College, pmcewan@wellesley.edu. The TIMSS data are publicly available.