Summary 46). I show a significantly positive relationship between early skills and adult life satisfaction. For reading skills, however, the strength of this relationship diminishes as individuals age, whereas it remains stable for math skills. I identify income and daily functioning as important mediators of this relationship. Furthermore, the chapter concludes that, while early basic skills are strong predictors of overall life satisfaction, they do not uniformly predict satisfaction across all life domains. The findings in this part of the dissertation show why it is important to prioritize investments in early basic skills. These skills predict, besides objective outcomes, how satisfied individuals are with how their life has turned out so far. By focusing on early basic skills, policymakers and educators partly provide individuals with the needed skills to lead a satisfied life. The second part of the dissertation on the development of basic skills contains two chapters. Both chapters address basic skill development within Dutch primary education. The first chapter in this part of the dissertation investigates the extent to which basic skill proficiency in grade one is associated with proficiency in grade six. The chapter concludes that there is strong first-sixth-grade relationship. In addition, part of the achievement gaps concerning sex and parental education at the end of primary education were already formed in first grade. The native-migrant achievement gap in favor of natives seems to narrow throughout primary education. The second chapter in this part of the dissertation examines how varying basic skills relate to each other throughout primary education. A thought experiment, or simulation, in this dissertation shows that a positive shock in one skill is associated with improvements in the others over time. 158
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