Toward a Children’s Savings and College-Bound Identity Intervention for Raising College Attendance Rates: A Multilevel Propensity Score Analysis

Abstract

It has been suggested that children's savings programs will be more effective if they are combined with strategies to build children's college-bound identities. In this study we use a multi-level treatment approach to propensity score analysis to test this proposition. Findings suggest that children who have savings and are certain they will graduate from a four-year college are more likely to attend college than their counterparts. Given this, we suggest that children's savings policies designed to increase college attendance rates will be more effective if they include strategies for building children's college-bound identity and college-bound identity programs will be more effective if they are linked to children's savings programs.

Household assets, academic expectations, and academic performance among Ghanaian junior high school students: Investigating mediation

“…This statistically significant finding provides empirical support for the theory that owning assets affects the way young people think about the future, which may change their behaviors and lead to positive developmental outcomes (Scanlon & Adams, 2009;Sherraden 1991). The findings also corroborate empirical evidence that asset ownership influences people's perceptions of the world, instills confidence, raises expectations, and affects behavior (Elliott, Chowa, & Loke, 2011;Yadama & Sherraden, 1996;Zhan, 2006).…”

“…To understand the independent association between household asset ownership and academic performance, these additional factors are controlled in all statistical models. Based on statistically significant findings from prior studies, this study controls for individual-level factors including youth's age, school attendance, commitment to school, and hours spent on school work outside school hours (Ajayi, 2012;Chowa, Masa, Ansong, & Ramos, In Press;Fentiman et al, 1999;Elliott, Chowa, & Loke, 2011). All variables are continuous.…”

Self and Identity

“…Thus, college students who feel more efficacious about learning spend less time studying than those who feel less efficacious, and less studying leads to worse grades (Vancouver & Kendall, 2006). Further, longitudinal analyses using national (Elliott, Chowa, & Loke, 2011) and regional (Uno, Mortimer, Kim, & Vuolo, 2010) data-sets show negative effects of self-efficacy on college attendance and no effects of academic self-efficacy on college completion. Experimentally, boosting efficacy decreases effort and performance (Vancouver et al, 2002), perhaps because it implies that one is certain about both one's abilities and about world processes-a combination that creates so much certainty that academic effort does not feel necessary and one is free to focus attention on other goals (e.g., Louro, Pieters, & Zeelenberg, 2007).…”

A Balance Sheet Perspective on Financial Success: Why Starting Early Matters

“…For those young adults who have not yet attended college, having college savings in adolescence is associated with high educational expectations and predicts the persistence of those expectations in young adulthood. “Furthermore, college savings and expectations may work in a virtuous cycle: the presence of one increases the other over time (Grinstein‐Weiss, Williams Shanks, Beverly 2014, 152).” Elliott, Chowa, and Loke (2011) echo this sentiment and find a positive interaction between college bound identities and college savings. This implies that “building children's college‐bound identity and college‐bound identity programs will be more effective if they are linked to children's savings programs (192).”…”