Young and Innocent - International Evidence on Age Effects Within Grades on School Victimization in Elementary School

School entry age effects on (short-term) cognitive outcomes are well-documented in the economic literature for many countries. These studies do not consider school entry age effects on the development of personality or social outcomes. However, the recent human capital literature emphasizes the multi-dimensionality of skills. Cognitive as well as non-cognitive skills are important determinants of labor market success. This is why the present study examines age effects on social outcome variables. Specifically, available international school assessment data allow observation whether younger children are more often victims of school violence in elementary school. Precisely, the question of interest in this study is whether children, as observed at one point in time, suffer from being the youngest within grade. Harm is done for example if the youngest children are more often bullied or are more often victims of any kind of school violence. Age effects are identified following the instrumental variables literature based on national school entry age rules. Possible selection into compliance with official rules is taken into account via the control function approach as a robustness check. Based on the PIRLS data for 17 countries, this paper demonstrates that younger children within grades (due to entering school younger according to official school entry age regulations) are harmed in terms of school victimization. The size of point estimates of the age effect is mostly higher for boys than for girls and for children with an immigrant background than for native children. Additionally, the study considers whether countries with a high age effect on cognitive outcomes are also countries with high age effects on social outcomes. Along this line, I find that the social effects of age within grade tend to be higher in countries where there are also high age effects on the observed cognitive test scores. Less favorable social outcomes seem to go hand in hand with less favorable test performance.

Mühlenweg, Andrea (2009), Young and Innocent - International Evidence on Age Effects Within Grades on School Victimization in Elementary School, ZEW Discussion Paper No. 09-031, Mannheim.