Birthdays, Schooling, and Crime: New Evidence on the Dropout-Crime Nexus

This report, based on administrative data for five cohorts of public school
children in North Carolina demonstrates that those born just after
the cut date for starting school (and therefore among the the oldest students
in the class, are likely to outperform those born just before in reading and
math in middle school, and are less likely to be involved in juvenile delinquency.

On the other hand, those born after the cut date are more likely to drop out of
high school before graduation. quite possibly because they have longer exposure to
the legal possibility of dropping out. The older students are also more likely to
commit a felony offense by age 19. Oddly, even if younger students are held back, they achieve less, and dropout less, than student born just after the cut-off date.

There is considerable heterogeneity in educational and criminal outcomes by sex,
race and other indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage.