In Germany, students are streamed at age ten into an academic or non-academic track. We demonstrate that the randomly allocated disadvantage of being born just before as opposed to just after the cutoff date for school entry leads to substantially different schooling experiences. Relatively...

I examine the impact of age within grade on victimization in elementary school in 17 countries. Identification relies on the instrumental variables approach drawing on school entry age rules. The results indicate that children are harmed by being the youngest.

We examine how parental health shocks affect children's non-cognitive skills. Based on a German mother-and-child data base, we draw on significant changes in self-reported parental health as an exogenous source of health variation to identify effects on outcomes for children at ages of three and...