The Empirical Content of Season-of-Birth Effects: An Investigation with Turkish Data

34 Pages Posted: 19 Sep 2016

See all articles by Huzeyfe Torun

Huzeyfe Torun

Government of the Republic of Turkey - Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey

Semih Tumen

TED University; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Abstract

Although the season of birth variable is often used as an instrumental variable to estimate the rate of returns to schooling in the labor economics literature, there is an emerging consensus that the season of birth is systematically associated with later outcomes in life such as the educational and labor market success; thus, it is highly likely non-random. Using a large micro-level data set from Turkey, we argue that the degree of this non-randomness can be even larger in a developing-country context. Specifically, we show that around 20 percent of all individuals in Turkey have January as their month of birth due to a combination of geographical, seasonal, institutional, and idiosyncratic factors that lead to misreporting.We further document that being January-born strongly predicts worse socio-economic outcomes in later life. We show that this can be a serious problem in evaluating policies that define eligibility based on the month of birth – such as compulsory schooling and compulsory military service laws that set the eligibility birth date cutoff as the January 1st. We confirm the validity of this concern based on a series of regression discontinuity design exercises. We conclude that, in a developing-country context, additional caution should be exercised when using the season-of-birth variable as a statistical tool.

Keywords: season-of-birth effects, IV, education, earnings, family background, misreporting

JEL Classification: C26, I26, J13

Suggested Citation

Torun, Huzeyfe and Tumen, Semih, The Empirical Content of Season-of-Birth Effects: An Investigation with Turkish Data. IZA Discussion Paper No. 10203, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2840147 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2840147

Huzeyfe Torun (Contact Author)

Government of the Republic of Turkey - Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey ( email )

Istiklal Cad. 10 Ulus
06100 Ankara, Ankara 06050
Turkey

Semih Tumen

TED University ( email )

Ziya Gokalp Bulvari No: 48
Kolej Çankaya, Ankara 06420
Turkey

IZA Institute of Labor Economics ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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