Abstracts Economics

Three Essays on Student Enrollment Responses to General Household and Education-Specific Assistance Programs

by Usamah Wasif

Greater educational attainment is associated with an increase in expected income, lowering of internal discount rates, and improved financial and health literacy. Income transfers have the potential to positively impact educational attainment by either reducing the direct cost of college attendance or by inducing an income effect that nudges students to decrease labor supply and devote greater time to studies. Whether assistance leads to more education depends on the circumstances, particularly the educational stage and assistance type. High school students may react differently to assistance relative to college students and both may react differently to general household income transfers compared to education-specific assistance. To tease out the relationship between income transfers and education and how this may vary by type of transfer program, my dissertation studies the impact of assistance on different enrollment margins at different stages of the education cycle.