Should myopic students wear eyeglasses?―A regression-discontinuity analysis

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite the high prevalence of myopia among school-age children in China, many myopic students are reluctant to wear eyeglasses. This study estimates the effects of wearing eyeglasses on myopic students’ academic performance, using data from a large-scale survey of middle-school students, the China Education Panel Survey. Our fuzzy regression discontinuity (RD) design, which exploits the jump in the probability of wearing eyeglasses at the threshold for myopia diagnosis, reveals that wearing eyeglasses improves myopic students’ Chinese and maths test scores by 0.27 and 0.24 standard deviations, respectively.