Progress 10/01/08 to 09/30/09
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The data we have compiled is a major product of our project. However, in order to promote it, we felt it was important to compare it to similar data that were compiled by Daron Acemoglu and Joshua Angrist. Those researchers compiled data on school entry and exit ages and published a paper in 2000. Since then, and because they made their data available to other researchers, their compilation has been widely used. Because of this we felt it was important to directly compare the CoSLaw data with the data they compiled (hereafter we refer to that data set as the A&A2000 data). There were 93 state-year observations where the CoSLaw data did not match the A&A2000 data. We produced an appendix that presents each discrepancy, the data we use to code our compulsory laws, and how we coded data when the language of the law was ambiguous enough to allow for more than one reading of the law. PARTICIPANTS: Not relevant to this project. TARGET AUDIENCES: Not relevant to this project. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Not relevant to this project.
Impacts
In addition to the above technical appendix, we wrote a paper that uses the compulsory schooling data. That paper investigates whether youth who enter school at younger ages learn more and, if so, whether the learning persists in the long run. The results show that there is evidence that children who enter school at older age perform less well on both the reading recognition and mathematics standardized tests. This result holds up when one uses our compulsory schooling laws to instrument for the average age children enter school in each state. However, this apparent confirmation of an effect of age at entry disappears when one compares children in the same family who entered school at different ages (a family "fixed" effect). When one uses only variation in age at entry of siblings who were required to enter school at different ages, there is no difference in performance on these tests for children who entered earlier or later. This result is new and important information that will be used in the design of educational policies regarding school entry and mandated kindergarten attendance laws. It suggests that mandating kindergarten is not going to yield significant gains in school performance of youth who would otherwise not have attended kindergarten.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 10/01/07 to 09/30/08
Outputs
OUTPUTS: During this period we constructed a data appendix that compared and contrasted the policy data on compulsory schooling laws with the laws complied by Joshua Angrist and Daron Acemoglu. The Angrist and Acemoglu data are the most widely used compilation of compulsory schooling policies. We are finishing this data appendix and will include it when we share the data. We also used the cleaned data in an analysis of the effects of the compulsory schooling laws on educational attainment. PARTICIPANTS: Not relevant to this project. TARGET AUDIENCES: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts
We have used our compilation of the compulsory schooling laws in models of educational attainment. There we show that our compilation shows stronger correlations with attained education. We also use the laws to estimate whether more educated have differential mortality.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 10/01/06 to 09/30/07
Outputs
OUTPUTS: During this year we have checked and added to our data on compulsory schooling. We collected data on whether each state requires children to attend kindergarten, when that requirement was first instituted, and other changes to the kindergarten requirements that occurred since a state first imposed it. We also spent quite a bit of time to check our coding of the compulsory schooling policies against the compilation of other researchers working with those data (who used sources different than ours). We have incorporated the new data and re-estimated our models.
PARTICIPANTS: The project is being lead by Dr. Dean R. Lillard (PI) together with Prof. Jennifer Gerner (co-PI), both of Cornell University. They have been assisted by Cornell undergraduate students, Crystal Cun and Yuliya Neverova.
Impacts
Our preliminary evidence suggests that there are few statistically significant differences in early school performance of children who must enter school earlier rather than later. However, we are still refining our models.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 01/01/06 to 12/31/06
Outputs
Over the past 12 months we presented preliminary research results at the annual meetings of the Population Association of America in Los Angeles, CA March 31-April 1, 2006. In that paper we examine how much the presence of older or younger siblings affects parental decisions to enroll a child in school. We find that children born later perform less well than their older siblings. The result is consistent with the idea that parents are able to spend less time helping a child when there are more children present who need attention.
Impacts
Our research will yield better estimates of whether and how compulsory schooling laws affect educational attainment at early ages.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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