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Article: How and why does age at kindergarten entry matter?
- Article from:
- FRBSF Economic Letter
- Article date:
- August 8, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Those who have spent time in a kindergarten classroom know that there are remarkable differences in children's skills. Research has shown that these skill differences are strongly tied to age, with students who enter kindergarten later in life doing better than younger entrants. Moreover, an "entry-age achievement gap" (hereafter, the EAAG) has been found to persist until as late as the eighth or ninth grade (see, for example, Bedard and Dhuey 2006).
Does this finding imply that parents or policymakers should push children to start kindergarten at a later age? The answer depends in part on what is driving the EAAG. In this Economic Letter, I describe possible ...