ABSTRACT
Early education programs have the potential to close student achievement gaps between disadvantaged children and their relatively advantaged peers. In this chapter, we explore the extent to which starting school earlier by up to one year can help shield children from the detrimental, long-term developmental consequences of having an ill or disabled sibling. Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, we find that children who have a sibling in poor health persistently score lower on cognitive development tests – but only for those children who start school later. In contrast, for children who commence school earlier, we do not find any longer-term cognitive developmental gaps. The penalties disappear when the ill-health in the sibling is of a temporary rather than longer-term nature. We hypothesize that an early school start reduces the impact of having an ill or disabled sibling by lessening the importance of resource-access inequalities within the family home. However, we find mixed impacts on the gaps in non-cognitive development. Our results are informative about the potential unintended consequences of policies that adjust the legal minimum age of school start.
