Parental Love Is Not Blind: Identifying Selection into Early School Start

In many countries parents can choose whether their children start elementary school one year early. Like many other educational decisions, this choice has lasting consequences that depend on each child's characteristics. Which children are sent to school early? We propose a novel methodology to identify the sign and strength of selection into early starting. We exploit a feature of the Italian education system: only children born between January and April can start elementary school one year early. We use data on standardized tests taken by all students in Italy. We find robust evidence of positive selection: early starters would have obtained scores 0.2 standard deviations higher than the average student, had they started regularly. Additionally, we use this methodology to compare the effect of early starting on selected and average students. We find that the penalty associated with early start is lower for selected students born in March and April. Link to paper: https://sites.google.com/site/imonzon/research/Aparicio_Fenoll_Campaniello_Monzon_Parental_Love.pdf?attredirects=0