Testing means-tested aid

Richard Murphy and Gill Wyness

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Billions of pounds per year is spent on aid for poor students in HE systems around the world, yet there remains limited evidence on the causal effect of these payments, particularly on the intensive margin. This is an empirical challenge since student aid is correlated with characteristics which influence both college enrolment and achievement. We overcome these challenges by studying a unique form of non-linear means tested financial aid which is unadvertised, varies substantially across institutions, and is subject to shifts in generosity across cohorts. Using student-level administrative data collected from 10 English universities, we study the effects of aid receipt on college completion rates, annual course scores, and degree class, using fixed effects and instrumental variables methods. Our findings suggest that each £1,000 of financial aid awarded increases the chances of gaining a good degree by around 3 percentage points, driven by completion of the final year and course scores.

Keywords: higher education; financial aid; degree completion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I22 I23 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2015-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/66060/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Testing Means-Tested Aid (2023)
Working Paper: Testing Means-Tested Aid (2016)
Working Paper: Testing Means-Tested Aid (2015)
Working Paper: Testing Means-Tested Aid? (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:66060

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().