Research

This paper provides new causal evidence on the effects of grade retention on educational attainment, behavioral outcomes, and labor market performance by analyzing Texas’s reading test-based retention policy. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, I find that third-grade retention significantly reduces annual earnings at age 26 by $3,477 (19%). While temporarily improving test scores, retention increases absenteeism, violent behavior, and juvenile crime, and reduces the likelihood of high school graduation. Moreover, retained students exhibit higher community college enrollment but lower public university attendance, though neither estimate is statistically significant.

We investigate whether Donald Trump’s “Chinese Virus” tweets contributed to the rise of anti-Asian incidents. We find that the number of incidents spiked following Trump’s initial “Chinese Virus” tweets and the subsequent dramatic rise in internet search activity for the phrase. Difference-in-differences and event-study analyses leveraging spatial variation indicate that this spike in anti-Asian incidents was significantly more pronounced in counties that supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election relative to those that supported Hillary Clinton. We estimate that anti-Asian incidents spiked by approximately 4200% in Trump-supported counties compared to an increase of approximately 200% in Clinton-supported counties.

Grade retention is widely practiced in education systems worldwide, but the effects of grade retention often differ from those of typical educational attainment. This chapter discusses recent research on the causes and consequences of grade retention, covering the effects of grade retention on academic achievement, behavioral outcomes, and labor market outcomes. Furthermore, it also provides an overview of the estimation of the effects of grade retention and a discussion of how retention can affect other research on education and labor markets. Finally, it provides an overview of research on the incentive effects of grade retention policies on retained and non-retained students and makes suggestions for future work in this area.

We study the long-term effects of access to state-funded early childhood education on educational attainment and labor market outcomes. To do so, we exploit quasi-random variation across districts and cohorts generated by the phased rollout of Texas’s large-scale public Pre-K program. Using restricted-access administrative data, we find that access to state-funded Pre-K substantially increases enrollment, particularly in districts without alternative preschool options. Additional results show that in districts that provide Pre-K simultaneously for three- and four-year-olds, access to Pre-K increases earnings at age 27 and high-school graduation by about 4 percent, with no effect on college enrollment. In contrast, access to Pre-K has no effects on labor market and educational outcomes in districts that primarily serve four-year-olds only. We provide suggestive evidence that the effectiveness of state-funded Pre-K depends on program funding rather than access alone.

How harmful are low levels of lead exposure to children’s human capital development? We provide new causal evidence by exploiting a post-2007 surge in piston-engine aircraft activity, the largest remaining source of airborne lead emissions in the United States, driven by flight-training demand. Using a triple-differences design and longitudinal administrative data, we find that students attending schools within one mile of high-surge airports score 0.168 standard deviations lower on reading tests and are 6\% and 25\% less likely to graduate from high school and enroll in a public university, respectively. Estimated effects on behavioral outcomes are small and statistically insignificant.