Research

In China, where myopia is widespread among school-age children, a considerable number of myopic students choose not to use eyeglasses. This research assesses the impact of wearing eyeglasses on the academic performance of myopic students by utilizing data from a comprehensive survey of middle-school students known as the China Education Panel Survey. Employing a unique approach called the fuzzy regression discontinuity (RD) design, which capitalizes on the significant increase in the likelihood of wearing eyeglasses when myopia is diagnosed, the study reveals that wearing eyeglasses leads to notable improvements in myopic students' performance on Chinese and mathematics tests, boosting their scores by 0.27 and 0.24 standard deviations, respectively.