A wide literature uses date of birth as an instrument to study the causal effects of educational attainment. This paper shows how parents delaying their children’s initial enrollment in kindergarten, a practice known as redshirting, can make estimates obtained through this identification framework all but impossible to interpret. A latent index model is used to illustrate how the monotonicity assumption in this framework is violated if redshirting decisions are made in a setting of essential heterogeneity. Empirical evidence is presented from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class (ECLS-K) data set that favors this scenario; redshirting is common and heterogeneity in the treatment effect of educational attainment is likely a factor in parents' redshirting decisions.
AcemogluD.AngristJ. (2000). How large are human-capital externalities? Evidence from compulsory schooling laws. NBER Macroeconomics Annual, 15, 9–59.
2.
AckermanD. J.BarnettW. S. (2005). Prepared for kindergarten: What does “Readi-ness” mean?National Institute for Early Education Research: Preschool Policy Brief.
3.
AdamsS. J. (2002). Educational attainment and health: Evidence from a sample of older adults. Education Economics, 10, 97–109.
4.
AliprantisD. (2010). When should children start school?Mimeo. University of Pennsylvania.
5.
AliprantisD. (2011). Assessing the evidence on neighborhood effects from Moving to Opportunity. Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Working Paper, 11–01.
6.
AngristJ. D.ImbensG. W. (1995). Two-stage least squares estimation of average causal effects in models with variable treatment intensity. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 90, 431–442.
7.
AngristJ. D.KruegerA. B. (1991). Does compulsory school attendance affect schooling and earnings?. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 106, 979–1014.
8.
BaruaR.LangK. (2009). School entry, educational attainment and quarter of birth: A cautionary tale of LATE. NBER Working Paper, 15236.
9.
BedardK.DhueyE. (2006). The persistence of early childhood maturity: International evidence of long-run age effects. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121, 1437–1472.
10.
BernalR.KeaneM. P. (2010). Quasi-structural estimation of a model of childcare choices and child cognitive ability production. Journal of Econometrics, 156, 164–189.
11.
BlackS. E.DevereuxP. J.SalvanesK. G. (2004). Fast times at Ridgemont High? The effect of compulsory schooling laws on teenage births. NBER Working Paper, 10911.
12.
BlauD. M. (1999). The effect of income on child development. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 81, 261–276.
13.
BlundellR.DiasM. C. (2009). Alternative approaches to evaluation in empirical microeconomics. Journal of Human Resources, 44, 565–640.
14.
BoundJ.JaegerD. A. (2000). Do compulsory school attendance laws alone explain the association between quarter of birth and earnings? In PolachekS. W. (Ed.), Worker well being, Volume 19, pp. 83–108. Research in Labor Economics.
15.
BoundJ.JaegerD. A.BakerR. M. (1995). Problems with instrumental variables estimation when the correlation between the instruments and the endogeneous explanatory variable is weak. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 90, 443–450.
16.
BucklesK.HungermanD. M. (2008). Season of birth and later outcomes: Old questions, new answers. NBER Working Paper, 14573.
17.
CameronS. V.HeckmanJ. J. (1993). The nonequivalence of high school equivalents. Journal of Labor Economics, 11, 1–47.
18.
CardD. (1999). The causal effect of education on earnings. In AshenfelterO.CardD. (Eds.), Handbook of labor economicsVol. 3, Amsterdam: Elsevier.
19.
CardD. (2001). Estimating the return to schooling: Progress on some persistent econometric problems. Econometrica, 69, 1127–1160.
20.
CascioE. U.LewisE. G. (2006). Schooling and the armed forces qualifying test. The Journal of Human Resources, 41, 294–318.
21.
CascioE. U. (2009). Do investments in universal early education pay off? Long-term effects of introducing kindergartens into public schools. NBER Working Paper, 14951.
22.
ChernozhukovV.HansenC. (2006). Instrumental quantile regression inference for structural and treatment effect models. Journal of Econometrics, 132, 491–525.
23.
CruzL. M.MoreiraM. J. (2005). On the validity of econometric techniques with weak instruments: Inference on returns to education using compulsory school attendance laws. The Journal of Human Resources, 40, 393–410.
24.
CurrieJ.ThomasD. (1995). Does Head Start make a difference?. The American Economic Review, 85, 341–364.
25.
DatarA. (2006). Does delaying kindergarten entrance give children a Head Start?. Economics of Education Review, 25, 43–62.
26.
Datcher-LouryL. (1988). Effects of mother’s home time on children’s schooling. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 70, 367–373.
27.
DeardenL.EmmersonC.FrayneC.MeghirC. (2009). Conditional cash transfers and school dropout rates. Journal of Human Resources, 44, 828–857.
28.
DeeT. S. (2004a). Are there civic returns to education?. Journal of Public Economics, 88, 1697–1720.
29.
DeeT. S. (2004b). Teachers, race, and student achievement in a randomized experiment. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 86, 195–210.
30.
DeeT. S. (2007). Teachers and the gender gaps in student achievement. The Journal of Human Resources, 42, 528–554.
31.
DemingD.DynarskiS. (2008). The lengthening of childhood. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 22, 71–92.
32.
DobkinC.FerreiraF. (2007, July). Do school entry laws affect educational attainment and labor market outcomes?Mimeo.University of Pennsylvania.
33.
ElderT. E.LubotskyD. H. (2008). Kindergarten entrance age and children’s achievement: Impacts of state policies, family background, and peers. Journal of Human Resources, 44(3):641–683.
34.
GarcesE.ThomasD.CurrieJ. (2002). Longer-term effects of Head Start. The American Economic Review, 92, 999–1012.
35.
GraueM. E. (1993). Ready for what? Constructing Meanings of Readiness for Kindergarten.New York: State University of New York.
36.
GraueM. E.DiPiernaJ. (2000). Redshirting and early retention: Who gets the “gift of time” and what are its outcomes?. American Educational Research Journal, 37, 509–534.
37.
HahnJ.ToddP.KlaauwW. V. D. (2001). Identification and estimation of treatment effects with a regression-discontinuity design. Econometrica, 69, 201–209.
38.
HanushekE. A.KainJ. F.RivkinS. G. (2004). Disruption versus Tiebout improvement: The costs and benefits of switching schools. Journal of Public Economics, 88, 1721–1746.
39.
HastingsJ. S.KaneT. J.StaigerD. O. (2006). Gender and performance: Evidence from school assignment by randomized lottery. The American Economic Review, 96, 232–236.
40.
HeckmanJ. J. (2005). Rejoinder: Response to Sobel. Sociological Methodology, 35, 135–162.
41.
HeckmanJ. J. (2010). Building bridges between structural and program evaluation approaches to evaluating policy. Journal of the Economic Literature, 48, 356–398.
42.
HeckmanJ. J.LalondeR. J.SmithJ. A. (1999). The economics and econometrics of active labor market programs. In AshenfelterO.CardD. (Eds.), Handbook of labor economics (Vol. 3), pp.1865–2097Amsterdam: Elsevier.
43.
HeckmanJ. J.MoonS. H.PintoR.SavelyevP.YavitzA. (2010). Analyzing social experiments as implemented: A reexamination of the evidence from the HighScope Perry Preschool Program. Quantitative Economics, 1, 1–46.
44.
HeckmanJ. J.UrzúaS. (2010). Comparing IV with structural models: What simple IV can and cannot identify. Journal of Econometrics, 156, 27–37.
45.
HeckmanJ. J.UrzúaS.VytlacilE. (2006). Understanding instrumental variables in models with essential heterogeneity. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 88, 389–432.
46.
HeckmanJ. J.VytlacilE. J. (2000). The relationship between treatment parameters within a latent variable framework. Economics Letters66, 33–39.
47.
HeckmanJ. J.VytlacilE. J. (2005). Structural equations, treatment effects, and econometric policy evaluation. Econometrica73, 669–738.
48.
HollandP. W. (1986). Statistics and causal inference. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 81, 945–960.
49.
ImbensG. W. (2010). Better LATE than nothing: Some comments on Deaton (2009) and Heckman and Urzua (2009). Journal of the Economic Literature, 48, 399–423.
50.
ImbensG. W.AngristJ. D. (1994). Identification and estimation of local average treatment effects. Econometrica, 62, 467–475.
51.
ImbensG. W.LemieuxT. (2008). Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to practice. Journal of Econometrics, 142, 615–635.
52.
KeaneM. P. (2010). Structural vs. atheoretic approaches to econometrics. Journal of Econometrics, 156, 3–20.
53.
KruegerA. B. (1999). Experimental estimates of education production functions. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114, 497–532.
54.
Lleras-MuneyA. (2005). The relationship between education and adult mortality in the United States. The Review of Economic Studies, 72, 189–221.
55.
LochnerL.MorettiE. (2004). The effect of education on crime: Evidence from prison inmates, arrests, and self-reports. The American Economic Review, 94, 155–189.
56.
McCraryJ.RoyerH. N. (2011). The effect of maternal education on fertility and infant health: Evidence from school entry policies using exact date of birth. American Economic Review101, 158–95.
57.
McEwanP. J.ShapiroJ. S. (2008). The benefits of delayed primary school enrollment: Discontinuity estimates using exact birth dates. Journal of Human Resources, 43, 1–29.
58.
MilliganK.MorettiE.OreopoulosP. (2004). Does education improve citizenship? Evidence from the US and the UK. Journal of Public Economics, 88, 1667–1695.
59.
MurnaneR. J.MaynardR. A.OhlsJ. C. (1981). Home resources and children’s achievement. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 63, 369–377.
60.
NealD. A.JohnsonW. R. (1996). The role of premarket factors in Black-White wage differences. Journal of Political Economy, 104, 869–895.
61.
OreopoulosP. (2007). Do dropouts drop out too soon? Wealth, health and happiness from compulsory schooling. Journal of Public Economics, 91, 2213–2229.
62.
OreopoulosP.PageM. E.StevensA. H. (2006). The intergenerational effects of compulsory schooling. Journal of Labor Economics, 24, 729–760.
63.
RosenzweigM. R.WolpinK. I. (2000). Natural “Natural Experiments” in economics. Journal of Economic Literature, 38, 827–874.
64.
RubinD. B. (1974). Estimating causal effects of treatments in randomized and nonrandomized studies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 66, 688–701.
65.
SanbonmatsuL.KlingJ. R.DuncanG. J.Brooks-GunnJ. (2006). Neighborhoods and academic achievement: Results from the Moving to Opportunity experiment. The Journal of Human Resources, 41, 649–691.
66.
SobelM. E. (2005). Discussion: The scientific model of causality. Sociological Methodology, 35, 99–133.
67.
StipekD. (2002). At what age should children enter kindergarten? A question for policy makers and parents. Social Policy Report XVI, (2):1–16.
68.
ToddP.WolpinK. I. (2007). The production of cognitive achievement in children: Home, school and racial test score gaps. Journal of Human Capital, 1, 91–136.
69.
VytlacilE. (2002). Independence, monotonicity, and latent index models: An equivalence result. Econometrica, 70, 331–341.
