Public policy and postsecondary education

Chapter 1. This paper presents estimates of the impact of educational saving incentives on college saving decisions from the Michigan SEED Program, a field experiment that targeted low-income families with young children. The treatment group was offered initial deposits of as much as ;Chapter 2. This paper presents estimates of the impact of student eligibility for federal financial aid on total student debt. I exploit a natural experiment created by the 1992 Amendment to the Higher Education Act of 1965, which removed assets from the calculation of federal aid eligibility for families with earned income of less than ;Chapter 3. The experimental and quasi-experimental literature finds few positive effects of financial education on financial behavior and wealth. I posit that the lack of measurable effects may be a result of the underlying relationship between financial literacy and asset accumulation. Theoretical literature suggests that financial education and traditional education are complements in the wealth production function, so the effect of financial education is conditional on years of schooling. To empirically test this theoretical hypothesis, I provide the first experimental evidence on the elasticity of substitution between traditional schooling and financial education in terms of wealth production in this paper. I am able to credibly identify this elasticity with data from the Learn...