PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Kindergarten and crime: What's the Link?

Students who started school later more likely to drop out, commit crimes

2015-03-19
(Press-News.org) DURHAM, N.C.-- Children who are older when they start kindergarten do well in the short term, academically and socially. But as teenagers, these old-for-grade students are more likely to drop out and commit serious crimes, says new research from Duke University.

The negative outcomes are significantly more likely for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

"This research provides the first compelling evidence of a causal link between dropout and crime. It supports the view that crime outcomes should be considered in evaluating school reforms," said lead author Philip J. Cook, a professor in Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy.

"Dropouts are greatly over-represented in prison, so we know there is a strong association between dropping out and crime," Cook said. "But to establish causation requires an experiment. My analysis takes advantage of nature's experiment associated with birth date."

The research report, by Cook and Songman Kang of Hanyang University in Seoul, South Korea, is forthcoming in the American Economic Journal-Applied Economics.

The study compared North Carolina public school students born 60 days before and 60 days after the school cutoff date. At the time of the study, North Carolina children had to turn 5 by Oct. 16 to be eligible to enter kindergarten that year.

Previous studies have established that children born just after the school-entry cutoff date, who enter school "old for grade," perform better academically than their younger classmates. As a result, a growing number of parents have delayed enrolling their children whose birthdays fall shortly before the cutoff date, seeking to gain academic and social advantages. "Academic redshirting" is more common for boys than girls and for whites than African Americans.

In addition to performing better academically, Cook's study found old-for-grade students were one-third less likely to engage in delinquent behavior while still in school.

"Up until the 16th birthday, it is all positive," Cook said. "They are doing better, relative to their classmates, by every measure. It makes sense, because they are more mature."

But after age 16, the picture shifts, Cook's research shows. The old-for-grade students are more likely to drop out and be convicted of a felony before age 20. The explanation for the seeming contradiction lies in the age at which students may legally withdraw from school, which is 16 in North Carolina.

"If they were born before the cutoff date, they have just 19 months between their 16th birthday and graduation to be tempted to drop out," Cook said. "If they were born just after and enter school later, they have 31 months, and for some of them, it is an irresistible temptation."

"It's human nature," Cook said. "For a lot of adolescents, high school is a drag."

Among the old-for-grade students, the likelihood of dropping out and being convicted of a serious crime is 3.4 times greater for those born to an unwed mother and 2.7 times greater for those whose mothers were high school dropouts.

"Should you redshirt your kid? Well, on the one hand, he'll do better while he's in school and is less likely to become delinquent. On the other hand, he'll be more likely to drop out before graduation, and bad things may follow that," Cook said.

Policymakers should take notice, Cook added.

"Even something as crude as a regulation that requires a kid stay in school to a fixed age, whether he wants to or not, has a considerable effect on criminal activity," Cook said.

Rather than tie legal withdrawal to age, states might consider requiring completion of a certain grade or a specified number of years in school, he said.

"People say there is no point keeping a kid in school who doesn't want to be there because he won't learn anything and he'll be disruptive," Cook said. "My findings suggest that intuitive argument is not entirely correct."

"Even students who would rather drop out can benefit from staying in school when they are required to do so. Otherwise they are prime candidates for recruitment into a life of crime," Cook said.

INFORMATION:

CITATION: "Birthdays, Schooling, and Crime: Regression-discontinuity Analysis of School Performance, Delinquency, Dropout, and Crime Initiation," Philip J. Cook and Songman Kang. Forthcoming in American Economic Journal-Applied Economics. An earlier version of this paper was published online as National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 18791, "Birthdays, Schooling and Crime: New Evidence on the Dropout-Crime." Available at NBER http://www.nber.org/papers/w18791



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Citizen scientists discover new plant species in the Cape Floral Kingdom

Citizen scientists discover new plant species in the Cape Floral Kingdom
2015-03-19
Amateur botanists in the Western Cape Province of South Africa have discovered two new species of beautiful blue-flowered legumes. The study was published in the open access journal PhytoKeys. Few people take the chance to tramp the empty rolling ranges of mountains and the fragmented and jagged coastline of the Southern Cape in South Africa. Most avoid it because of how wild and tough-going it can be. This region is part of a unique and species rich global flora called the Cape Floral Kingdom. Yet there are a band of intrepid walkers and climbers who traverse these ...

Medical expansion has led people worldwide to feel less healthy

2015-03-19
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Across much of the Western world, 25 years of expansion of the medical system has actually led to people feeling less healthy over time, a new study has found. A researcher at The Ohio State University used several large multinational datasets to examine changes in how people rated their health between 1981 and 2007 and compared that to medical expansion in 28 countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. During that time, the medical industry expanded dramatically in many of those countries, which you might ...

Pregnant women with asthma need to curb urge to ask for antibiotics

2015-03-19
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. (March 3, 2015) - Getting sick when you're pregnant is especially difficult, but women whose children are at risk for developing asthma should avoid antibiotics, according to a new study. The study, published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the scientific publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), followed 298 mother-child pairs through the child's third year of life. The study found that 22 percent of the 103 children born to mothers who took antibiotics during pregnancy were diagnosed with ...

Immigrants are usually in better health than native Canadians... at least when they arrive

2015-03-19
This news release is available in French. Research has shown that the health of immigrants is generally better than that of citizens of their host country, at least on their arrival and for some time afterwards. But a team of researchers in Montreal has found that this is not true of all groups of immigrants; children and older people, for example, may be exceptions. "Our analysis suggests that immigrant health policies should not be 'one size fits all' in type, and that they need to take account of immigrants' ages and the indicators of the health problems they are ...

Physician practices need help to adopt new payment models, study finds

2015-03-19
Physician practices are engaging in new health care payment models intended to improve quality and reduce costs, but are finding that they need help with successfully managing increasing amounts of data and figuring out how to respond to the diversity of programs and quality metrics from different payers, according to a new joint study by the RAND Corporation and the American Medical Association. Both the federal government and private payers are changing the way they pay physicians and other health professionals, moving to innovative models intended to improve quality ...

Hidden benefits of electric vehicles revealed

2015-03-19
Electric vehicles are cool, research shows. Literally. A study in this week's Scientific Reports by researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) and in China add more fuel to the already hot debate about whether electric vehicles are more environmentally friendly than conventional vehicles by uncovering two hidden benefits. They show that the cool factor is real - in that electric vehicles emit significantly less heat. That difference could mitigate the urban heat island effect, the phenomenon that helps turn big cities like Beijing into pressure cookers in warm ...

NIH-funded researchers find off-patent antibiotics effectively combat MRSA skin infections

2015-03-19
Researchers funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, have found that two common antibiotic treatments work equally well against bacterial skin infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) acquired outside of hospital settings. Known as community-associated MRSA, or CA-MRSA, these skin infections have been reported in athletes, daycare-age children, students, military personnel and prison inmates, among others, and can lead to hospitalization, surgical procedures, bacteria ...

Click! That's how modern chemistry bonds nanoparticles to a substrate

Click! Thats how modern chemistry bonds nanoparticles to a substrate
2015-03-19
Nanoparticles of various types can be quickly and permanently bonded to a solid substrate, if one of the most effective methods of synthesis, click chemistry, is used for this purpose. The novel method has been presented by a team of researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland. A small movement of the hand, the characteristic 'click!' - and the snap fastener quickly and securely fastens our clothes. One of the newest methods of synthesis in modern chemistry, click chemistry, works on a similar basis. Here, molecules ...

Leadership: 10 tips for choosing an academic chair

2015-03-19
Clear and realistic expectations are key to successfully hiring heads of departments, say Professor Pierre-Alain Clavien, University of Zurich, and Joseph Deiss, former President of the Swiss Confederation, in a commentary in Nature magazine. Selecting a chair for a position in clinical academic medicine is often problematic, with the diverse demands placed on the position proving a constant source of debate. Today's heads of departments are not only expected to be outstanding physicians, researchers, and teachers, but also adroit and cost-conscious managers. Finding ...

World-first cancer drugs could work in larger group of patients

2015-03-19
A pioneering class of drugs that target cancers with mutations in the BRCA breast cancer genes could also work against tumours with another type of genetic fault, a new study suggests. Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, found that errors in a gene called CLBC leave cancer cells vulnerable to PARP inhibitor drugs. Around 2 per cent of all tumours have defects in CLBC. The study, which was carried out in collaboration with colleagues in Denmark and the Czech Republic, was funded in the UK by the European Union, and was published today (Thursday) in ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Inability to pay for healthcare reaches record high in U.S.

Science ‘storytelling’ urgently needed amid climate and biodiversity crisis

KAIST Develops Retinal Therapy to Restore Lost Vision​

Adipocyte-hepatocyte signaling mechanism uncovered in endoplasmic reticulum stress response

Mammals were adapting from life in the trees to living on the ground before dinosaur-killing asteroid

Low LDL cholesterol levels linked to reduced risk of dementia

Thickening of the eye’s retina associated with greater risk and severity of postoperative delirium in older patients

Almost one in ten people surveyed report having been harmed by the NHS in the last three years

Enhancing light control with complex frequency excitations

New research finds novel drug target for acute myeloid leukemia, bringing hope for cancer patients

New insight into factors associated with a common disease among dogs and humans

Illuminating single atoms for sustainable propylene production

New study finds Rocky Mountain snow contamination

Study examines lactation in critically ill patients

UVA Engineering Dean Jennifer West earns AIMBE’s 2025 Pierre Galletti Award

Doubling down on metasurfaces

New Cedars-Sinai study shows how specialized diet can improve gut disorders

Making moves and hitting the breaks: Owl journeys surprise researchers in western Montana

PKU Scientists simulate the origin and evolution of the North Atlantic Oscillation

ICRAFT breakthrough: Unlocking A20’s dual role in cancer immunotherapy

How VR technology is changing the game for Alzheimer’s disease

A borrowed bacterial gene allowed some marine diatoms to live on a seaweed diet

Balance between two competing nerve proteins deters symptoms of autism in mice

Use of antifungals in agriculture may increase resistance in an infectious yeast

Awareness grows of cancer risk from alcohol consumption, survey finds

The experts that can outsmart optical illusions

Pregnancy may reduce long COVID risk

Scientists uncover novel immune mechanism in wheat tandem kinase

Three University of Virginia Engineering faculty elected as AAAS Fellows

Unintentional drug overdoses take a toll across the U.S. unequally, study finds

[Press-News.org] Kindergarten and crime: What's the Link?
Students who started school later more likely to drop out, commit crimes