This paper examines the impact of delayed school entry on families, particularly focusing on how an additional year of childcare responsibilities affects both mothers and their children's siblings. Using a natural experiment created by school entry cutoffs in Chile, I find that mothers reduce their labor market participation by approximately 2% when caregiving is extended. This reduction persists until the child turns 20, and there is a corresponding decrease in monthly income, although this is partially offset by a small increase in government transfers. The negative effects also extend to younger siblings, who experience lower GPAs, standardized test scores, and post-secondary enrollment rates. In contrast, older siblings and fathers are not significantly affected. These results suggest that time constraints on mothers, driven by limited access to formal preschool care, may contribute to the observed negative outcomes.
This paper estimates the impact of school meal quality on student outcomes. We take advantage of a staggered implementation of a national program that improved the nutritional content of meals in public schools in Chile starting in 2015. Using a Difference-in-Difference approach and national student-level data over six years, we estimate a credible Intention-to-Treat impact of healthier meals on Math and Reading test scores. We find an average increase of 0.036 standard deviations in combined scores. The students from the poorest and rural households present the largest effects. We explore possible mechanisms including attendance. We show indirect evidence that supports the main hypothesized mechanism, the improvement of food nutrients. In particular, we find evidence that the students from low-income households that are more often exposed to these nutritious meals are the ones who get the largest increase in their test scores. Finally, we calculate that it would cost 87 USD per year to raise a student’s test score by 0.1 standard deviations by providing healthier meals.
The school starting age (SSA) policy, which determines when a child can begin formal education, has been widely studied worldwide. However, in developing countries, tracking individuals from primary school enrollment to age 26 to examine long-term outcomes in education, fertility, and early labor markets presents unique challenges. Using comprehensive administrative data from Chile, I find well-documented positive effects throughout the school years while also uncovering novel, less-studied effects. A later SSA reduces teenage parenthood by 9%, with a stronger effect on males, lowering their likelihood of teenage fatherhood by 12%. The link between school-starting age and teenage fatherhood has never been explored before, making this finding significant given the profound, lasting effects teenage parenthood can have on young parents and their children. Additionally, students who start school at a later age experience poorer labor market outcomes between ages 18 and 26, likely due to ongoing secondary and post secondary education enrollment. While one might expect these effects to be offset by higher income in later years, this perspective overlooks a critical factor: the impact of early contributions to the pension system. Since pensions in Chile depend entirely on individual contributions—with earlier contributions yielding the highest returns—and given the trend toward increasing life expectancy, this trade-off must be considered when generalizing the positive effects of a later SSA. (Draft coming soon!)