Although universal childcare has become an essential tool to support child development, few economic studies analyze its effects on non-cognitive skills and little is known about causal effects on these skills in the long run. In this paper we go beyond short run analyses and examine the long...

Previous findings on (fleeting) relative age effects in school suggest that, given innate ability, too few younger and too many older students attend academic tracks. Using a regression discontinuity design around school-specific admission thresholds, we estimate the cognitive and non-cognitive...

Gehen Kinder früher in eine Kindertageseinrichtung (Kita) als andere, zeigen sich noch im Jugendalter Unterschiede in den Persönlichkeitseigenschaften, die direkt mit dem Zeitpunkt des Kita-Eintritts zusammenhängen. So sind Jugendliche in Westdeutschland, die Ende der 1990er Jahre bereits mit...

This paper evaluates the long-term effects of class size in primary school. We use rich administrative data from Sweden and exploit variation in class size created by a maximum class size rule. Smaller classes in the last three years of primary school (age 10 to 13) are not only beneficial for...

It is still widely debated how non-cognitive skills can be affected by policy intervention. For example, universal music education programs are becoming increasingly popular among policy makers in Germany and other developed countries. These are intended to give children from poor families the...

Peacetime military service has both positive and negative effects on human capital. While it depreciates academic abilities it also enhances non-cognitive skills. The net effect of conscription is hard to identify due to issues of self-selection, endogenous timing and omitted variables bias. We...

Institutions of the liberal democracies of the developed Western world are increasingly insufficient to deal with the ever worsening of social problems associated with technological progress, the rapid economic transformation of the economy, the demographic issues and the acceleration of...

Child skills are shaped by parental investments. When parents experience a health shock, their investments and therefore their children's skills may be affected. This paper estimates causal effects of severe parental health shocks on child socio-emotional skills. Drawing on a large-scale survey...

We exploit admission cutoffs to secondary schools to study the effects of general academically oriented, versus vocational secondary schooling on cognitive and non-cognitive skills using a regression discontinuity design. We measure these skills using the Finnish Defence Forces Basic Skills Test...

The early development of non-cognitive skills has longlasting benefits for children's sub- sequent educational attainment and wages. Drawing on a rich, nationally representative longitudinal sample of young children in Ireland, we present new evidence on whether the use of centre-based childcare...