The Long-term Effects of Early Track Choice

Abstract

We investigate the effects of attending a more advanced track in middle school on long-term education and labour market outcomes for Germany, a country with a rigorous early-age tracking system, where the risk of misallocating students is particularly high. Our research design exploits quasi-random shifts between tracks induced by date of birth, and speaks to the long-term effects of early track attendance for a group of marginal students most at risk of misallocation. Remarkably, we find no evidence that attending a more advanced track leads to more favourable long-term outcomes. We attribute this result to the possibility of later track-reversal.