The hidden benefit of starting school later:
a stronger sense of control
by Dániel Horn
When should children start school?
The question is usually framed in terms of academic performance or later earnings.
Yet, schooling may also shape something less visible but equally important: how children think about their own agency.
Do they believe that effort matters, or that outcomes are mostly determined by luck and circumstances?
In a recent study, we examine whether the age at which children start school affects their locus of control (LoC) – a key non-cognitive skill linked to education, labour market success, and well-being. We exploit the Hungarian school entry cutoff, which creates quasi-random variation in starting age: children born just before and after the threshold enter school at different ages for reasons unrelated to their background. This allows us to isolate the causal effect of delayed school entry.
The results are striking. Starting school one year later increases students’ internal locus of control by around 0.08 standard deviations on average, and even more for those whose school entry is effectively determined by the cutoff. In other words, older starters are more likely to believe that their actions shape their outcomes.
Why does this happen?
The mechanism appears to be relative age within the classroom. Older students tend to perform better in the early years, receive more positive feedback, and experience more success. These early advantages may accumulate into a stronger sense of personal control. Crucially, what matters is not absolute age, but being older relative to peers—suggesting that the effect is inherently positional.
The implications are both promising and subtle. The effect is particularly strong for disadvantaged students, indicating that delayed school entry could help reduce inequalities in non-cognitive skills. At the same time, because the mechanism is relative, universal delays would likely cancel out the advantage. School starting age is therefore not a one-size-fits-all policy lever, but a targeted tool with trade-offs, including delayed labour market entry and additional childcare needs.
Reference:
Horn, Dániel; Hubert János Kiss and Ágnes Szabó-Morvai (2026) Delayed school entry increases internal locus of control.
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Vol. 241. January, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107317
