Three Essays On The Economics Of Education

The second chapter documents that a student's relative age is an important predictor of high school leadership activity. Relative age is a factor that is associated purely with school structure, rather than genetics or family background. State-specific school entry cut-offs induce systematic within-grade variation in student maturity, which in turn generate differences in leadership activity. Across three nationally representative samples that span three decades, the relatively oldest students are four to eleven percent more likely to be high school leaders.