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learn$ave Project: Final ReportPrefaceIn today’s economy, people who lack sufficient educationand basic skills are exposing themselves to lower earningsand higher risk of unemployment. This has been asource of concern for Canadian governments over the lasttwo decades. That concern, along with the desire to builda competitive workforce, explains why governments havebeen looking for ways to encourage Canadians to invest intheir own human capital.learn$ave was introduced as a demonstration projectto test the effectiveness of a new instrument – IndividualDevelopment Accounts (IDAs) – to encourage low-incomeadults to save for their own education or training. Theuse of IDAs was pioneered in the United States in the1990s and introduced in Canada on a small scale morerecently. In general, IDAs work as regular saving accounts,with account holders receiving a matching grant forevery dollar they deposit. To benefit from the matchinggrant, savings have to be used for specific purposes. Inlearn$ave, savings could be used for education, training orstarting a small business.There has been much discussion of the promise of IDAs,but little proof of their alleged effectiveness, particularlyin Canada and particularly in regard to incentivizingadult education and business start-ups. Would the offerbe appealing to the target group? Would the programcontribute to increasing education enrolment and smallbusiness start-ups among participants? Would it improvelabour market outcomes? This is the reason why, in2000, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada(HRSDC) funded learn$ave, a nine-year demonstrationproject to test the IDA approach.This report presents final results of the learn$aveproject covering the entire 54-month period after participants’entry into the project. It summarizes findingsbased on all lines of evidence, including participantsurveys, focus groups, and administrative data. While theemphasis is placed on impacts on participants’ savingsand education enrolment, important implementationissues around recruitment and take-up as well as costeffectivenessissues are also addressed.organizations that SEDI worked with to deliver andadminister learn$ave in 10 sites across Canada. Thanksshould also go to the financial institutions that held andadministered the learn$ave accounts, namely, RBC RoyalBank, Assiniboine Credit Union, and Caisse d’économieDesjardins.We appreciate the contributions of Christopher Mallory(production manager), Stéphanie Navarro (executiveassistant), Eliza Bennett (editor), Jeff Hammell (designer),and Jennifer Robson (consultant) who very capablyhandled the production, revision and dissemination ofthis report. We would also like to thank Saul Schwartz,professor at the Carleton University School of PublicPolicy and Administration who provided very insightfuland useful comments on an earlier draft of this report.We are grateful as well to Connie Cheng at POLLARA whowas responsible for conducting the participant surveys.The participants who dutifully responded in the varioussurveys conducted for this project should also be thanked.Thanks are also due to SRDC colleagues who playedearlier key roles in this project, particularly MichaelDowie and Hongmei Cao. Finally, special thanks to mycolleagues at SRDC who performed the analysis andco-authored this report, namely, Norm Leckie (projectmanager), Doug Tattrie, and Taylor Shek-Wai Hui as wellas Jennifer Robson who is now a private consultant.Jean-Pierre VoyerPresidentSocial Research and Demonstration CorporationNovember 2010We are grateful to HRSDC for funding the learn$aveproject, in particular Satya Brink and Urvashi Dhawan-Biswal who provided the authors with advice andcomments along the way, as well as Patrick Brussière whoprovided support in the latter stages of this project. Wewould also wish to thank our major partner, Social andEnterprise Development Innovations (SEDI), which developedthe initial project idea, and the community-basedSocial Research and Demonstration Corporation Preface | vii