Vol.11 | Does the early bird catch the worm?

<p>Should you really start school early? Studying twins can tell us...</p><p>Today many parents are concerned about their child’s learning, and want to know how to accelerate this. One common belief is that starting school early can give children an increased head-start in education. However, is this really true? Dr. Xuyan Lou, Assistant Professor in our School of Economics, was determined to find out the answer. Together with her collaborators, Xuyan adopted a novel approach to studying this question: she examined data from twins in China, using this to assess if the common Chinese saying “the early bird will catch the worm” is correct or not.</p><p>Join Mary and Derek as they discuss Xuyan's paper “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147596722000233">Does the early bird catch the worm? The effect of school starting age on educational attainment and labor market outcomes: Evidence from Chinese urban twins data</a>” published in the Journal of Comparative Econo...