This study explores how the distinctive Korean age reckoning, the Confucian age culture, and the school-entry-cutoff date affect the decisions of parents on both birth and school-entry timing for their children in Korea. There is a traditional method of age calculation in Korea that all people get one year older on January 1. Korea also has a distinctive age culture influenced by Confucianism. I find a substantial amount of birth and school-entry timing selections around the Korean age-cutoff date, January 1. The estimation results show that children born in January and February delayed school entry by 18.2–21.2 percentage points more than those born in November and December and 24% of births moved from one week before January 1 to one week after when the school-entry cutoff was March 1. After the school-entry cutoff has changed to January 1, children barely delay school enrollment, while more births are moved from December to January: 42% of births are shifted within the 7-day window. These behaviors are made by two motives: (1) parents want their children to have the same Korean age with their classmates because of the Confucian age culture; (2) they also want their children to be relatively older to have academic advantages.

中文翻译：

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韩国的年龄文化、入学截止、出生月份和入学时间的选择

本研究探讨了独特的韩国年龄推算、儒家年龄文化和入学截止日期如何影响父母对韩国孩子的出生和入学时间的决定。韩国有一种传统的年龄计算方法，即所有人都在 1 月 1 日大一岁。韩国也有受儒家思想影响的独特年龄文化。我发现在韩国的年龄截止日期 1 月 1 日前后有大量出生和入学时间选择。估计结果显示，1 月和 2 月出生的孩子比 11 月出生的孩子延迟入学时间多 18.2-21.2 个百分点12 月和 24% 的新生儿从 1 月 1 日之前的一周转移到了入学截止日期为 3 月 1 日之后的一周。在入学截止日期更改为 1 月 1 日之后，孩子们几乎不会延迟入学，而更多的新生儿从 12 月转移到 1 月：42% 的新生儿在 7 天的窗口内转移。这些行为有两个动机：（1）由于儒家时代文化，父母希望他们的孩子与同学有相同的韩国年龄；（2）他们也希望自己的孩子相对年长一些，有学业优势。