Resumen de Maturity and School Outcomes in an Inflexible System: Evidence from Catalonia
Caterina Calsamiglia, Annalisa Loviglio
Having a unique cut-off to determine when children can access school induces a large heterogeneity in maturity to coexist in a classroom. We use rich administrative data of the universe of public schools in Catalonia to show that: 1) Relatively younger children do significantly worse both in tests administered at the school level and at the regional level, and they experience greater retention; 2) Younger children in our data exhibit higher dropout rates and chose the academic track in secondary school less often; 3) The effect is homogeneous across SES and significant across the whole ability distribution; 4) Younger children are more frequently diagnosed with learning disabilities
