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Student Aid And The Distribution Of Educational Attainment

Author

Listed:
  • Maggie Jones

    (Department of Economics, University of Victoria)

Abstract
This paper uses cutbacks to a post-secondary funding program for Indigenous people in Canada to understand how marginalized populations respond to increases in the costs of higher education. I exploit between-cohort and cross-eligibility variation in exposure to student aid to show that increasing the costs of post-secondary education not only affects post-secondary attainment but also leads to a sizeable decrease in high school graduation rates. This result is in line with a theoretical model that embeds the expected costs of higher education in the high school decision. The model predicts that high school graduation is affected by the cost of higher education in environments where students face low labour market returns to completing high school. I show that after reductions in targeted student aid in the late 1980s, high school graduation rates declined by four percentage points on Indian reserves, where the return to a high school degree is low, relative to a control group. Post-secondary attainment also responded to changes in the availability of student aid, although the exact magnitudes and levels of post- secondary education affected vary across genders. I estimate that the cutbacks to student aid explain approximately 10 percent of the contemporary difference in hours worked between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada.

Suggested Citation

  • Maggie Jones, 2017. "Student Aid And The Distribution Of Educational Attainment," Working Paper 1373, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    • Handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:1373
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econ.queensu.ca/sites/econ.queensu.ca/files/qed_wp_1373.pdf
    File Function: First version 2017
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Maggie Jones & Michael Barber, 2019. "Inequalities in Test Scores between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Youth in Canada," Department Discussion Papers 1904, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    student aid; education; post-secondary funding; tuition; labour supply; education choice; high school graduation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I22 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Educational Finance; Financial Aid
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination

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