Impatience and academic performance

. . . [I]mpatience affects academic performance through two different channels: impatient students spend less effort in studying activities and set less ambitious objectives in terms of grades at exams. As a consequence, the relationship between impatience and academic success may vary according to how performance is measured. Using data from a sample of Italian undergraduate students, we find a strong negative relationship between impatience and both the average grade at exams and the probability of graduating with honours. Conversely, a negative but not statistically significant correlation emerges between time preferences and both the number of credits earned in the three years following enrolment and the probability of timely graduation. Our findings are robust to alternative measures of impatience and controlling for family background characteristics, for cognitive abilities and for risk preferences.

From a new paper by De Paola & Gioia (February 2013). 

HT: Jonas Holmstrom.

Fasting During Pregnancy and Children's Academic Performance

We consider the effects of daytime fasting by pregnant women during the lunar month of Ramadan on their children's test scores at age seven. Using English register data, we find that scores are .05 to .08 standard deviations lower for Pakistani and Bangladeshi students exposed to Ramadan in early pregnancy. These estimates are downward biased to the extent that Ramadan is not universally observed. We conclude that the effects of prenatal investments on test scores are comparable to many conventional educational interventions but are likely to be more cost effective and less subject to "fade out".

That is the abstract of an interesting new paper by Douglas Almond, Bhashkar Mazumder, Reyn van Ewijk.