Does Compressing High School Duration Affect Students’ Stress and Mental Health? Evidence from the National Educational Panel Study

Starting in 2004/2005, the German state Baden-Wurttemberg reduced academic track duration from nine to eight years, leaving cumulative instruction time mostly unchanged. I use this change in schooling policy to identify the effect of increased schooling intensity on students’ internalizing mental health problems and perceived stress. Using data on 2306 students from the Additional Study Baden-Wurttemberg of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), estimates show strong negative effects on internalizing mental health problems for girls and an increase in stress for both genders

Does the transition into daylight saving time affect students’ performance?

We use international assessment data on more than 22,000 students from six European countries to investigate whether the transition into daylight saving time affects elementary students’ performance in low-stakes tests in the week after the time change. Exploiting the time shift as a natural experiment, we find that the effect of changing the clock is very small in magnitude and not statistically significant in all three testing areas (math, science, and reading). Therefore, our results challenge the prevailing public opinion that daylight saving time should be abandoned because of its detrimental effects on schoolchildren’s performance