Conference Program

The costs of tertiary education represent a significant barrier for many families (Elliott and Lewis, 2018). Among the many types of interventions aimed at supporting students from these families, one possible solution is asset building. Unlike measures such as scholarships or honour loans, which provide a fixed amount of resources at specific points in time, asset building promotes the habit of gradual saving among families, so that a sum for covering education expenses is accumulated in the medium to long term. Beyond facilitating the accumulation of financial resources with minimal effort, asset-building programmes - often involving participants in training on topics such as financial literacy - may also improve future outcomes by strengthening both students’ and their families’ self-efficacy and planning capacity (Dynarski and Scott-Clayton, 2013). Percorsi is a programme promoted by Fondazione Ufficio Pio. Active since 2010 in Turin, Italy, Percorsi supports low-income families by enrolling them in a saving programme one or two years before their child completes upper secondary education. The resources accumulated are then quadrupled by the programme to support education-related expenses. The impact evaluation of Percorsi is based on a randomised controlled trial, and involves about 1500 students who applied for the programme between 2014 and 2017 (Martini et al., 2021). Our study, based on students’ follow-up up to ten years after entry into the programme, shows that participation substantially increased student’s likelihood of enrolling in university. Moreover, for some categories of participants there is a significant increase in the probability of obtaining a university degree. Finally, Percorsi proves to be particularly effective for those who seem to be more likely to abandon studies after high school.