Investing in Schooling in Chile: The Role of Information about Financial Aid for Higher Education

Recent economic research shows that imperfect information about Mincer returns to education (in developing countries) or about financial aid (in the US) may undermine investments in schooling and exacerbate inequalities in access to education. We extend this literature by presenting the results of an experiment that provided children and a subset of their parents with specific information about financial aid for higher education, and measured the impact on effort in primary school. We developed a DVD information program and randomly assigned a sample of Chilean 8th graders in poor urban schools to information treatment and control groups. Half of the treatment group watched the DVD at school (Student group) and the other half received a copy of the program to watch at home (Family group). Using survey and matched administrative data to measure outcomes three to six months post-intervention, we show that knowledge of financial aid sources improves in treated schools and school-reported absenteeism falls by 14%. These responses appear to be driven by students with higher baseline grades; yet we find no significant effects on 8th Grade scores or 9th Grade enrolment for any students. While parents in the Family treatment group score significantly higher on tests of information related to DVD content, watching the DVD at home is no more effective at changing effort than watching at school, at least for high ability students likely to select in to watching the DVD. Our results suggest that Chile falls somewhere between developing and developed countries: exposure to information about financial aid for post-secondary schooling significantly affects student knowledge and absenteeism, but is insufficient for improving other educational outcomes.finaicial aid, education, Chile, imperfect information, behavior, education investment

When Knowledge is not Enough: HIV/AIDS Information and Risky Behavior in Botswana

The spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic is still fueled by ignorance in many parts of the world. Filling in knowledge gaps, particularly between men and women, is considered key to preventing future infections and to reducing female vulnerabilities to the disease. However, such knowledge is arguably only a necessary condition for targeting these objectives. In this paper, we describe the extent to which HIV/AIDS knowledge is correlated with less risky sexual behavior. We ask: even when there are no substantial knowledge gaps between men and women, do we still observe sex-specific differentials in sexual behavior that would increase vulnerability to infection? We use data from two recent household surveys in Botswana to address this question. We show that even when men and women have very similar types of knowledge, they have different probabilities of reporting safe sex. Our findings are consistent with the existence of non-informational barriers to behavioral change, some of which appear to be sex-specific. The descriptive exercise in this paper suggests that it may be overly optimistic to hope for reductions in risky behavior through the channel of HIV-information provision alone.

The Effects of Financial Aid and Returns Information in Selective and Less Selective Schools : Experimental Evidence from Chile

Schools that provide higher education often belong to either a merit-based selective system or an open-access less selective system. This paper presents the results of a field experiment that provided Grade 12 students in Chile with tailored information about financial aid and average earnings and employment probabilities for schools and careers in both types of schools. No effect is found on the extensive margins of enrollment in the selective or in the less selective sector. Treated students change their intensive margin decisions: they choose careers and schools with lower expected wages and lower employment probabilities, but with higher quality relative to their baseline preferences