| Individuals from low-income families are less likely to attend and complete school beyond the compulsory school age. This could have negative impacts on economic outcomes and intergenerational mobility. One possibility is that these individuals are financially constrained and need additional financial assistance. However, there is mixed evidence regarding its effects on low-income students.;In this dissertation, I provide a comprehensive evaluation of four major programs that provide different types of financial assistance to low-income students. I present the first evidence on several of these programs and new evidence on others using different data and methods. I focus on the effects of three variables: college loan access, college grants or conditional benefits, and high school conditional benefits. My empirical approach relies on a large set of policy changes that impacted the benefits of different types of families in different ways. I use five datasets to study forty years of policies, from 1960 to 2000. I perform three main analyses.;First, I study the introduction of state Guaranteed Student Loan programs. These programs were introduced in different states in different years, in an era when limited other financial assistance was available. The borrowing limits were high and generally sufficient to cover tuition, fees, room and board at a public four-year college. However, I do not find an effect of GSL access on overall attendance or on attendance of low-income students. This suggests that few students were deterred from attendance by borrowing constraints. On the other hand, I do find evidence that the loans shifted attendance from public to private colleges and from two-year to four-year colleges.;Second, I study the Pell, AFDC and Social Security benefits for college students. These are the three most generous nationwide college benefit programs for disadvantaged students on record. I estimate that attendance changes by 1.0 - 1.2 percentage points per ;Third, I study the AFDC and Social Security benefits for high school students. The latter represents the largest financial incentive for high school attendance on record, about ;Overall, my results suggest that (i) borrowing constraints do not significantly deter attendance and (ii) policies that reduce the price of attendance do moderately increase attendance but may not be cost effective. These results raise the possibility that many non-attendees expect very low returns since they did not attend even when the price was substantially reduced and sufficient resources were available.;I present the college results in Chapter 1 and the high school results in Chapter 2. |
