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Author: Gerner, Jennifer L.

Resulting in 4 citations.

1.	Gerner, Jennifer L. Lillard, Dean R.
1.	Does School Performance Increase When Children Enter at Younger Ages? Presented: Philadelphia, PA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, March-April 2005 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79 Publisher: Population Association of America Keyword(s): Academic Development; Age at School Entry; Heterogeneity; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); School Entry/Readiness; Siblings Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. Our paper investigates whether enrollment at earlier ages increases school performance. We use data from the Children of the NLSY79 to examine performance as a function of home inputs, school inputs and instability at home, school, and the neighborhood. We characterize school performance using test scores from standardized ability tests administered to these children at ages 3, 6, and 9. We focus on the age at which a child first enrolled in school, recognizing that parents have some choice over this age. To estimate age of enrollment we take advantage of differences across states and over time in compulsory schooling laws that determine the age by which a child must be enrolled. Under the assumption that parents do not choose a state of residence based on these laws, we identify the policy effect of earlier enrollment on performance. We will estimate family and state fixed effects models. We model school performance as a function of home inputs, school inputs and three levels of instability suffered by children - at home, school, and in their neighborhood. We include these measures of instability in our model under the assumption that a child's school performance will be higher when the circumstances of their lives are relatively stable. We include circumstances of co-residence, where they are living, their parents relationship, and mobility. Of course, the circumstances are largely chosen by parents. Although it is very interesting to consider the impact of stability on performance, to do so, we would need to model the stability itself. Since we are primarily interested in the relationship between age at school entry and subsequent school performance we want to account for as much of the heterogeneity within and across households in factors that also affect school performance. We use our measures of instability in this spirit. Our focus is on the relationship between the age children start formal schooling and their subsequent school performance. One reason to focus on this relationship is that states have a long history of regulating the age at which children enter school. We take advantage of this regulation to predict age of school enrollment that is reasonably orthogonal to the unobserved individual and family background characteristics. To do so, we must assume that each family's choice of state is not determined by compulsory schooling laws. We also take advantage of having observations on multiple children in the same family to estimate how age of school entry affects siblings who were required to enter school at different ages either by virtue of a change in the compulsory school age or because their family moved to a state with a different compulsory school age. We will use the children of the NLSY respondents. We will use performance data on standardized tests administered to each child at age 3, 6, and 9. We model the change in test scores between age 3 and age 6 and between age 6 and age 9. We can hold constant family effects and identify policy effects by looking at children in the same family subject to different policy regimes.
	Bibliography Citation Gerner, Jennifer L. and Dean R. Lillard. "Does School Performance Increase When Children Enter at Younger Ages?" Presented: Philadelphia, PA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, March-April 2005.

2.	Lillard, Dean R. Gerner, Jennifer L.
2.	Does School Performance Increase when Children Enter at Younger Ages? Presented: Washington, DC, Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Annual Research Conference, "Understanding and Informing Policy Design", 3-5 November, 2005 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79 Publisher: Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Keyword(s): Academic Development; Age at School Entry; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); School Entry/Readiness; Siblings; State-Level Data/Policy Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. We use data from the Children of the NLSY79 to investigate whether enrollment at earlier ages increases school performance. We characterize school performance using test scores from standardized ability tests administered to these children at ages 3, 6, and 9. We focus on the age at which a child first enrolled in school, recognizing that parents have some choice over this age. To estimate age of enrollment we take advantage of differences across states and over time in compulsory schooling laws that determine the age by which a child must be enrolled. Since variation in these regulations are plausibly orthogonal to the unobserved individual and family background characteristics we can use them to predict the age of school entry of a given child. Under the assumption that parents do not choose a state of residence based on these laws, we identify the policy effect of earlier enrollment on performance. A second identification strategy takes advantage of having observations on multiple children in the same family to estimate how age of school entry affects siblings who were required to enter school at different ages either by virtue of a change in the compulsory school age or because their family moved to a state with a different compulsory school age. We will estimate family and state fixed effects models. We model school performance as a function of home inputs, school inputs and three levels of instability suffered by children - at home, school, and in their neighborhood. We include these measures of instability in our model under the assumption that a childs school performance will be higher when the circumstances of their lives are relatively stable. We include circumstances of co-residence, where they are living, their parents' relationship, and mobility. Of course, the circumstances are largely chosen by parents. Although it is very interesting to consider the impact of stability on performance, to do so, we would need to model the stability itself. Since we are primarily interested in the relationship between age at school entry and subsequent school performance we want to account for as much of the heterogeneity within and across households in factors that also affect school performance. We use our measures of instability in this spirit.
	Bibliography Citation Lillard, Dean R. and Jennifer L. Gerner. "Does School Performance Increase when Children Enter at Younger Ages?" Presented: Washington, DC, Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Annual Research Conference, "Understanding and Informing Policy Design", 3-5 November, 2005.

3.	Lillard, Dean R. Gerner, Jennifer L.
3.	Explaining Birth Order Effects Using Variation in Compulsory Schooling Law Presented: Los Angeles CA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, March-April 2006 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Publisher: Population Association of America Keyword(s): Birth Order; School Entry/Readiness; Siblings Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. We use cross-state and temporal variation in compulsory schooling laws to explain differences across siblings in the age at school entry of children of different birth orders. The analysis takes advantage of changes in the age parents are first allowed to enroll children in public schools. Because our data, the Children of the NLSY79, cover a long time period (1986 through 2002) we observe a large number of children within families who were allowed to enter school at different ages. These differences in the age of first permitted entry means that parents face greater incentives to enter a youngest child into school at an earlier age than they did an older sibling. We use these different incentives to first control for whether parents in fact do enter children into school at different ages and then to investigate how much of sibling differences are explained by differences in age at entry.
	Bibliography Citation Lillard, Dean R. and Jennifer L. Gerner. "Explaining Birth Order Effects Using Variation in Compulsory Schooling Law." Presented: Los Angeles CA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, March-April 2006.

4.	Lillard, Dean R. Gerner, Jennifer L.
4.	Family Composition and College Choice: Does It Take Two Parents To Go To The Ivy League? Presented: New Orleans, LA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, May 1996. Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: Population Association of America Keyword(s): Bias Decomposition; College Education; College Enrollment; Colleges; Family Characteristics; Family Circumstances, Changes in; Family Formation; Family Influences; Fathers, Biological; Fathers, Influence Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. Using NLSY79 data, Lillard and Gerner found that children who do not consistently live with two biological parents are only half as likely to ever attend a selective college (defined as the top 50 in the nation). Even after controlling for parental income, employment and education, grade point average, SAT scores, and participation in sports and other extracurricular activities, the researches found 'striking' differences between students who lived with both biological parents and those who did not.
	Bibliography Citation Lillard, Dean R. and Jennifer L. Gerner. "Family Composition and College Choice: Does It Take Two Parents To Go To The Ivy League?" Presented: New Orleans, LA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, May 1996.

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