| Rashmi Barua
Boston University
Effect of kindergarten entrance age on academic performance and maternal labor supply
FINAL REPORT:
This dissertation addresses the issue of optimal school entry age. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and the US Census, this study examines the effect of delaying kindergarten entry on cognitive test scores, educational attainment and maternal labor supply.
The first essay estimates the effect of a one year delay in entering kindergarten on academic performance. To deal with the endogeneity of school entrance age, we exploit the variation in month of birth and state kindergarten entrance age laws. The results suggest that older entrants have higher test scores compared to younger entrants in the same grade and are less likely to repeat grades. However conditional on age, older entrants perform worse because they have completed less schooling.
The second essay uses Two Sample Instrumental Variables (TSIV) to estimate the effect of delayed school entry on educational attainment. We show that previous studies that have used instrumental variables to deal with the endogeneity of school entry age are severely biased. In addition, we propose a structural model of optimal kindergarten entry age and use indirect inference simulation methods to estimate the parameters of the model. Further, we use our simulated data to obtain true Local Average Treatment Effect estimates of the effect of school entry age on educational attainment.
The third chapter evaluates the effect of delaying kindergarten entry on long run maternal labor supply. I use an exogenous source of variation in maternal net earning opportunities, generated through school entrance age of children, to study intertemporal labor supply behavior. The estimates suggest that delayed school enrollment has long run implications for maternal labor supply. Results point towards significant intertemporal substitution in labor supply. In particular, rough calculations yield an uncompensated wage elasticity of 0.76, wealth elasticity of -0.37 and an intertemporal elasticity of substitution equal to 1.1.
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