Background:

This study assesses the determinants of grade repetition and middle school drop-out in Uruguay, focusing on the role of past nutritional trajectory and non-cognitive abilities. A bulk of research attests the relevance of early childhood development and interventions in early stages on a wide set of out-comes across the whole life cycle (Behrman et al., 2009; Conti and Heckman, 2012; Daelmans et al., 2016). In the developing world, many studies highlight the strong association among nutrition and other childhood outcomes, and specifically schooling (Behrman and Wolfe, 1987). However, the role of non cognitive abilities on educational outcomes has been studied to a lesser extent.

Methods:

We use a two waves panel survey that follows-up a cohort of children since 2004, when they were first graders at public primary schools. The cohort considered in this study was exposed to a severe economic crisis in the first 3-4 years of life (1999-2003). In order to isolate the determinants of the probability of repetition we use a fixed effects estimator, exploiting the longitudinal nature of the data-set. To overcome the potential endogeneity problems arising from including previous repetition events as a determinant in the case of the school drop-outs equations, we base our analysis on MCO and MC2E estimators.

Results:

Our main results show that lagged household income and height for age strongly predict grade repetition. At the same time, a low SDQ score in the pro-social, emotional symptoms, hyperactivity and behavioral problems sub-scales is highly associated with repetition. Meanwhile, repetition strongly predicts school drop-out.

Conclusions:

These findings are consistent with the previous literature that points out that early child development strongly conditions outcomes in later life. Specifically, we identify a strong effect of departing conditions on teen-age educational outcomes. The latter uggest the relevance of designing early interventions that provide support to households since early stages in the life cycle. Identifying the initial conditions that deprivations that determine educational outcomes is a very relevant input for short-run and long-run antipoverty policy design. Our findings also point out that the links among grade repetition and school drop-out need to be further studied in order to expand educational achievements in Uruguay.