Home
Scholarly Works
What makes a leader? Relative age and high school...
Journal article

What makes a leader? Relative age and high school leadership

Abstract

Economists have identified a substantial adult wage premium attached to high school leadership activity. Unresolved is the extent to which it constitutes human capital acquisition or proxies for an “innate” unobserved skill. We document a determinant of high school leadership activity that is associated purely with school structure, rather than genetics or family background – a student's relative age. State-specific school entry cut-offs induce systematic within grade variation in student maturity, which in turn generates differences in leadership activity. We find that the relatively oldest students are 4–11 percent more likely to be high school leaders.

Authors

Dhuey E; Lipscomb S

Journal

Economics of Education Review, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 173–183

Publisher

Elsevier

Publication Date

April 1, 2008

DOI

10.1016/j.econedurev.2006.08.005

ISSN

0272-7757

Labels

Fields of Research (FoR)

Contact the Experts team