Research Highlights Featured Chart

April 15, 2026

Starting later, finishing stronger

In developing countries, delayed school entry may lead to long-term gains.

Tyler Smith

Students sit in classroom in Malealea, Lesotho.

Source: Reinhold Leitner

Previous research in high-income countries suggests that children who enter primary school at younger ages accumulate more total years of education and have better outcomes in adulthood, but these results may not translate to poor and developing countries.

In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, authors Jan-Walter De Neve, Ramaele Moshoeshoe, and Jacob Bor examine how the age at which children enter primary school affects their educational attainment and long-run life outcomes in Lesotho, one of the poorest countries in southern Africa. 

The study exploits a provision in Lesotho's Education Act of 2010, which requires children who will turn six by June 30 to enroll in primary school by January that year. Children born on July 1 or later may defer enrollment for a full year. This rule creates a sharp discontinuity in school starting age around a particular calendar date, with children born in June and July being otherwise nearly identical in family background, household wealth, and early childhood health. The authors find that, on average, July-born children enter school about a half a year older than their June-born peers.

The authors compared students born just before the June cutoff to those born just after. Figure 4 from the authors’ paper illustrates one of their central findings.

Figure 4 from De Neve et al. (2026)

The chart shows the average total years of schooling completed—measured among respondents aged 18 to 35 in the 2018 Lesotho Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey—against month of birth. The vertical bars indicate 95 percent confidence intervals.

Total years of schooling shows a slightly upward trend from January through June, followed by an upward jump in July. The authors estimate that being born just after the threshold results in an additional 0.405 years of schooling, with a standard error of 0.142, compared to peers born just before the threshold. This represents a roughly 5 percent increase over the baseline average of 8.1 years of total schooling.

The authors also show that there appear to be several downstream effects from more schooling. Children who start school at an older age are more likely to hold professional or managerial occupations, accumulate higher household wealth, have fewer children as teenagers, and are less likely to test HIV-positive in adulthood. Moreover, their children also have measurably higher survival rates.

The findings suggest that in low-income settings, where class sizes are large, opportunity costs are high, and educational bottlenecks are severe, the gains from starting school at an older age outweigh the costs.