Birth Timing and the Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital

Arbitrary age-cutoff dates used for eligibility in schooling and organized sports create differential opportunities for children that can have long-term consequences. These opportunities, in turn, provide incentives for birth-date targeting. I study a setting in which being born just after the cutoff date is highly advantageous relative to being born late in the eligibility year. Using an exogenous change in the cutoff date, I obtain causal evidence showing how birth timing at conception responds to memory-based salient incentives: certain parents target birth dates to ensure that their children are among the oldest in the eligibility year.