Long-run consequences of Parents' Support on schooling decisions

The application of law 30/2003 in Italy, introduces new flexible age requirements, allowing children whose sixth birthday falls on or before April the 30th of the given scholastic year to enroll in the first year of primary school. In addition to classes composition variation, in terms of more or less "ready for school" children, the new agreements provide parents with further responsibility linked to the choice of early entry option. Our research question develops in this scenario, with the aim to assess whether early entry options have long-term effects on students' scholastic choices given that more or less apprehensive parents have in turn had the opportunity to choose on their children enrollment. Exploiting an RDD setup, we show that given early entry option and parents’ support, teenagers students are more likely to be tracked in Lyceum rather than Technical or Vocational schools, and above all, that the jump is higher for female students.