Have you heard of the Relative Age Effect (RAE)? It has been well-researched since the 1980s, but few understand it. Therefore, I thought I would put together a post that gives you an overview of it and how it might, ultimately, help you understand aspects of your child's development.
What is it?
RAE is a term used to explain the advantage gained by children born early in a particular cycle. For those in the UK, perhaps the most obvious example of this is in the education system. An academic year in a school runs from September to July. The oldest person born in that year could have been born on the 1st of September, with the youngest born on the 31st of August. The oldest of those two children has almost a full year of development in hand over the younger child, despite being in the 'same year' at school. The consequence is that the older child has more time to develop, among other things, physically, cognitively and emotionally despite being viewed as 'the same age' by the system. This consequence is called the RAE.
