TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bettinger, Eric
TI  - How Financial Aid Affects Persistence
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10242
PY  - 2004
Y2  - January 2004
DO  - 10.3386/w10242
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10242
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10242.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Eric Bettinger
Stanford School of Education
CERAS 522, 520 Galvez Mall
Stanford, CA 94305
Tel: 650/736-7727
Fax: 650/723-9931
E-Mail: ebettinger@stanford.edu
M1  - published as Eric Bettinger. "How Financial Aid Affects Persistence," in Caroline M. Hoxby, editor, "College Choices: The Economics of Where to Go, When to Go, and How to Pay For It" University of Chicago Press (2004)

AB  - The Pell Grant program is the largest means-tested financial assistance available to postsecondary students across the United States, yet researchers have only limited evidence on the causal effects of these grants.  This paper examines the effect of Pell grants on student persistence after the first year.  The paper uses unique, student-level data from all public colleges in Ohio. The data include detailed financial data which allow me to identify small discontinuities in the Pell grant formula.  I exploit these discontinuities to identify the causal effects of the voucher.  The results based on discontinuity approaches suggest that Pell grants reduce college drop-out behavior.  The results in this paper support other evidence that find a relationship between need-based aid and college completion (e.g. Dynarski 2002, Turner and Bound 2002).
ER  -