Early School Exposure, Test Scores, and Noncognitive Outcomes

Abstract

We estimate the effects of receiving additional schooling before age five on cognitive and noncognitive outcomes, exploiting unique school entry rules in England that cause variation in the age at school entry and the effective length of the first school year, and combining survey data with administrative school records up to six years after exposure. We find significant effects on both cognitive and noncognitive outcomes at ages five and seven, particularly so for boys with a disadvantaged parental background. At age 11, effects on cognitive outcomes have disappeared, while there is still evidence for effects on noncognitive outcomes. (JEL I21, J13)

Does Schooling Decrease Socioeconomic Inequality in Early Achievement? A Differential Exposure Approach

“…This is the contrast constructed by our design, which has its roots in psychological research that aims at identifying the separate contribution of schooling and ageing to cognitive development (Carlsson et al 2015; Cliffordson and Gustafsson 2008). Our approach also builds on Cornelissen and Dustmann (2019), who studied school-exposure effects by exploiting institutional rules that allowed children to enter the academic year at different terms in England. We focus on the effects of 1st-grade schooling but, in principle, the proposed approach may be extended to measure the exposure effect of later grades.…”

“…To see why exposure coefficient β 1 (and age coefficient β 2 ) measure a composite effect, we follow Cornelissen and Dustmann (2019) and write out a theoretical model in which age at test day ( A t ), age at entry ( A s ), and school-year exposure ( E t ) have separate effects on achievement:…”

Children’s socio-emotional skills: Is there a quantity–quality trade-off?

“…Over recent years, economists have widely exploited this measure (Gupta & Simonsen 2010, Nghiem et al 2015, Fleche 2017, Kuehnle & Oberfichtner 2017, Attanasio et al 2018, Cornelissen & Dustmann 2018. Using the socio-emotional skills reported by the mother during childhood based on the SDQ questionnaire, recent studies show that socio-emotional skills are the most important predictors of adulthood life satisfaction (Layard et al 2014) and of labour market outcomes: Clark & Lepinteur (2019) demonstrate that better socio-emotional skills in childhood reduce significantly the time spent unemployed during active-life.…”

“…2 The non-cognitive skills are also measured by teachers, but it is provided only for the fourth wave. Moreover, parents had to give their consent which drastically reduces the sample size and raises concerns of selection regarding the remaining observations (see Cornelissen & Dustmann 2018).…”

Caught between Cultures: Unintended Consequences of Improving Opportunity for Immigrant Girls

“…Age and season of birth could matter for two reasons. First, older children might do better academically (Cascio and Lewis 2006;Black et al 2011;Cornelissen and Dustmann 2019) or differ on other margins such as self confidence or competitiveness (Page et al 2019) and these factors could influence the outcomes we study. Second, socioeconomic characteristics of parents have been shown to change over the year (Buckles and Hungerman 2013;Carlsson et al 2015), so children born at different times may not have comparable backgrounds.…”