Matching Pell Grants: Implications for College Debt and Parental Transfers

We study the causal effect of the net price of college on student debt, schooling investment, and parental transfers by exploiting a natural experiment. A large public US university introduced a program to match Pell Grants in academic year 2019–2020. We use a difference-in-difference approach to measure the impact of this policy on the variables of interest and interpret our findings using a simple structural model of human capital investment under credit constraints.

Blogs Publicados