Abstract
There is extensive evidence on the effect of kindergarten attendance on current and later life educational and labor market outcomes. But there is little evidence on peer effects related to kindergarten attendance itself. We address this gap in the literature by examining kindergarten peer effects among middle-school students in China. We explore the effect of peer kindergarten attendance on own test scores and socio-emotional skills. We find that having a larger proportion of peers who attended kindergarten improves math, English and Chinese test scores, conditional on own kindergarten attendance. There are also limited effects on various measures of non-cognitive outcomes and mental health. We demonstrate that these effects are larger among children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and are likely mediated through student behavioral changes such as more time spent on homework and less time on watching TV or playing video games. Our results underscore that existing studies likely incorrectly estimate the general equilibrium impacts of kindergarten attendance on cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes since they do not take these positive externalities into account.