Affording college with the help of asset building: First experimental impacts from Italy

This paper presents the early impact estimates from a randomized controlled trial aimed at testing the efficacy of an asset-building programme on higher education participation of children coming from low-income families. The experimental evidence points to positive and statistically significant impacts of the programme on university enrolment (+8.7 percentage points) and the likelihood of passing at least one exam in the first semester (+9.3 pp). The impact of the programme is substantially larger for students from vocational schools (+21 and +33 pp, respectively). The results suggests that incentivized savings represent a viable option to improve the effectiveness of financial aid.