 Should student employment be subsidized? Conditional counterfactuals and the outcomes of work-study participationJudith Scott-Clayton and Veronica Minaya Economics of Education Review, 2016, vol. 52, issue C, 1-18 Abstract: Student employment subsidies are one of the largest types of federal employment subsidies, yet little is known about their impact. We provide a framework highlighting the likelihood of heterogeneity in program effects, depending upon whether recipients are marginal or inframarginal workers. We then utilize a matching approach to estimate the effects of the Federal Work-Study program, leveraging the fact that FWS funding varies across institutions for idiosyncratic reasons. Our results suggest that about half of FWS participants would have worked even in the absence of the subsidy; for these students, FWS reduces hours worked and improves academic outcomes, but has little impact on early post-college employment. For students who would not have worked otherwise, the pattern of effects reverses. Overall, the positive effects are strongest for subgroups who are the least likely to have access to the program, suggesting there may be gains to improved targeting of funds. Keywords: Postsecondary education; Student employment; Student financial aid; State and federal aid (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:52:y:2016:i:c:p:1-18 DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2015.06.006 Access Statistics for this article Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier |
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