Kindergarten Entry Age and Academic

We use instrumental variable estimation strategy to estimate the effect of a one year delay in entering kindergarten on academic outcomes of children. Using data from the Child-NLSY, we present evidence that older entrants perform better in test scores compared to younger entrants in the same grade. The positive effects from being older are statistically significant, at conventional levels of significance, up to grade four. We
also find that a one year delay in kindergarten entry reduces the probability of grade retention by 19%. When we compare children at the same age group, older entrants perform worse in test scores. We attribute this to the lesser years of schooling completed by older entrants as compared to children who entered early. The proposed methodology is an improvement from previous literature that tried to deal with the endogeneity of entrance ages. Using our empirical strategy we are able to provide consistent estimates of the Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE) of the group of "compliers" in the spirit of Angrist and Imbens (1994). Our estimates are policy relevant since they capture the effects of a law induced delay in school entry on academic outcomes for children.