Increasing Take-Up of Literacy Tutoring: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment

Misty Gallo, Patrick J. Wolf and Harry A. Patrinos

No 1836, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: Government programs often experience low take-up, limiting their potential positive impact. We examine whether reducing registration frictions can increase participation in a state-financed literacy intervention program. In a randomized field experiment, families received either encouragement and a simplified enrollment process, or these interventions plus text message nudges, relative to a business-as-usual control group. We find that encouragement and simplified registration increased take-up by more than 10 percentage points, while a fuller treatment of encouragement, simplified enrollment, and text nudges increased take-up by 6 percentage points. We also estimate the impact of these treatments to promote use of funding and amount of funding used to access tutoring. We find positive intent-to-treat effects with the fuller treatment showing a strong impact on use and amount of funding used. These low-cost interventions offer a promising strategy for increasing participation in government programs.

Keywords: Literacy; Tutoring; Take-up; Nudge; Behavioral economics; Encouragement; Regulatory friction; Parental engagement; Choice; Implementation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D91 I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-nud
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:1836

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