Relative Age, Class Assignment, and Academic Performance: Evidence from Brazilian Primary Schools

• Date: 01 January 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/sjoe.12215
• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Author: Martin Foureaux Koppensteiner

©The editors of The Scandinavian Journal of Economics 2016.

Scand. J. of Economics 120(1), 296–325, 2018

DOI: 10.1111/sjoe.12215

Relative Age, Class Assignment, and

Academic Performance: Evidence from

Brazilian Primary SchoolsÅ

Martin Foureaux Koppensteiner

University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK

mk332@le.ac.uk

Abstract

Students in Brazil are typically assigned to classes based on the age ranking in their

cohort. I exploit this rule to estimate how fifth-grade students’ achievement in mathematics

is affected when they are in classes with older peers. I find that being assigned to

the older class leads to a drop in maths scores of about 0.4 of a standard deviation

for students at the cut-off. I provide evidence that heterogeneity in age is an important

factor behind this effect. Information on teaching practices and student behaviour sheds

light on how class heterogeneity harms learning.

Keywords: Group effects; group heterogeneity; primary education; regression discontinuity

JEL classification:I20; I21

I. Introduction

The question of whether a group composition matters for the outcome of

an individual member of that group has received considerable attention

in numerous contexts where social interactions might occur. Peer effects

have been studied in schools, universities, workplaces, neighbourhoods,

and prisons, as well as other institutions.1Due to the natural grouping

*I am very g rateful to Francesca Cornaglia, Claudio Ferraz, Randi Hjalmarsson, Marco

Manacorda, Barbara Petrangolo, Rodrigo Soares, and seminar participants at PUC Rio, Queen

Mary, Centre for Economic Performance LSE, Alicante, Leicester, ZEW Mannheim, the Royal

Economic Society Meeting, ESPE, the North American Winter Meeting of the Econometric

Society, the EALE/SOLE Third International Conference, the IZA Summer School in Labor

Economics, and the Congress of the European Economic Association for very useful comments.

I am also very grateful to two anonymous referees for suggestions that have substantially

improved this manuscript.This is a substantially revised version of a paper previously circulated

with the title “Class Assignment and Peer Group Effects: Evidence from Brazilian Primary

Schools”. I would like to thank the Secretariat of Education in Minas Gerais, the Brazilian

Ministry of Education, and the National Institute for Educational Studies and Research (INEP)

for providing me with the data. The usual disclaimer applies.

1Recent studies include: Mas and Moretti (2009) on productivity effects for supermarket

cashiers; Bandiera et al. (2010) on social networks and worker productivityin far m production;

Bayer et al. (2009) on the effect that juvenile offenders’serving time has on others’ subsequent

criminal behaviour, to name just a few. Studies on peer effects in education include: Hoxby

M. Foureaux Koppensteiner 297

of students into schools and classrooms, and the potential for education

policies to affect the peer group composition, peer effects in education have

received extensive attention from economists. Recent work goes beyond

linear-in-means specifications and points to the potential relevance of the

distribution of peer characteristics in explaining group effects (Hoxby and

Weingarth, 2006; Lyle, 2009).

The identification of group effects is challenging, due to conceptual

problems as well as data limitations. In the education sphere, for example,

an identification strategy for peer effects needs to address a potential

endogenous selection of students into schools and classes. With selection

into groups, unobserved characteristics – such as ability, parental support

and students’ effort – are likely to be correlated among peers. Educational

outcomes are therefore correlated within the peer group even in the

absence of externalities. In addition, the analysis needs to deal with

separating peer effects from common shocks to the peer group, such

as differential educational and teacher inputs, and it needs to account for

the simultaneous determination of student and peer achievement (Manski,

1993; Hanushek et al., 2003).

Randomized experiments are the first choice for overcoming the

selection problem, and there have been a number of recent applications in

this area.2Empirical strategies that exploit natural experiments have also

been used, such as conditional random assignment of college roommates

by Zimmerman (2003) and Sacerdote (2003), or the idiosyncratic variation

in the gender or racial composition of a given cohort over time

(Hoxby, 2000). There is little experimental or quasi-experimental evidence

that overcomes the identification problems of peer group effects in

primary or secondary education, and there is even less evidence that

specifically considers distributional features of peer groups that might

affect educational achievement.

(2000) for gender and race peer effects; Hanushek et al. (2003), who provide a framework for

estimating peer effects trying to overcome omitted variables and simultaneous equation biases;

Duflo et al. (2011), who provide evidence from a randomized experiment in Kenya; Lavy

et al. (2012a), who look at ability peer effects and potential channels; Lavy et al. (2012b),

who study the distributional effects of ability peer effects; Lavy and Schlosser (2011), who

examine gender peer effects and their operational channels; Zimmerman (2003) and Sacerdote

(2003), who look at peer effects in college education; Angrist and Lang (2004), who study

peer effects on racial integration; Ammermueller and Pischke (2009), who perform a cross-

country comparison of peer effects at the primary school level. Student tracking, school choice,

school buses, admission policies, class formation, repetition policies, and residential location

decisions are relevant policy issues that can change the peer composition in schools and

classrooms (Hanushek et al., 2003; Zimmerman, 2003).

2See Duflo et al. (2011) on ability grouping in primary schools. Also, Whitmore (2005)

looks at gender peer effects, and Cascio and Whitmore Schanzenbach (2016) look at peer

age composition, both using data from Project STAR.

©The editors of The Scandinavian Journal of Economics 2016.