TY  - JOUR
AU  - Dobkin,Carlos
AU  - Ferreira,Fernando
TI  - Do School Entry Laws Affect Educational Attainment and Labor Market Outcomes?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14945
PY  - 2009
Y2  - May 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14945
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14945.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Carlos Dobkin
Department of Economics
University of California, Santa Cruz
1156 High Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
Tel: 831/459-2079
Fax: 831/459-5077
E-Mail: cdobkin@ucsc.edu

Fernando Ferreira
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania
1461 Steinberg - Dietrich Hall
3620 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6302
Tel: 215/898-7181
Fax: 215/573-2220
E-Mail: fferreir@wharton.upenn.edu
AB  - Age based school entry laws force parents and educators to consider an important tradeoff:  Though students who are the youngest in their school cohort typically have poorer academic performance, on average, they have slightly higher educational attainment.  In this paper we document that for a large cohort of California and Texas natives the school entry laws increased educational attainment of students who enter school early, but also lowered their academic performance while in school.  However, we find no evidence that the age at which children enter school effects job market outcomes, such as wages or the probability of employment.  This suggests that the net effect on adult labor market outcomes of the increased educational attainment and poorer academic performance is close to zero.
ER  -