How to cope with dyslexia: The effects of special education on academic performance, personality traits, and well-being

I use Danish administrative data to study the effects of a special education intervention for pupils with severe dyslexia. My empirical approach exploits individual level panel data that allow me to track pupils before and after the initiation of treatment. Using a difference-in-difference strategy in combination with entropy balancing, I find positive and persistent effects of the intervention on pupils’ reading scores, personality traits, and school well-being. The intervention reduces the reading gap to non-dyslexics by 33 percent and the well-being gap by 80 percent.