Full report. - Social Research and Demonstration Corp

learn$ave Project: Final Report• Education attainment level at baseline: Prior educationdid not make much of a difference in learn$ave impactson education program enrolment. The education programenrolment rate of control group members was similaracross all levels of baseline educational attainment(55–56 per cent), and there was no statistical differencein the impacts of learn$ave at different education levels.Still, it is notable that program group (both learn$ave onlyand learn$ave-plus) participants at the lowest level ofeducation (those with no PSE certification) demonstratedan important increase (10.1 and 12.2 percent percentagepoints) in education program participation compared tothe control group. Not only would those participants havethe most to gain from further education, but, as discussedin Chapter 1, prior education has been shown to be astrong predictor of future participation in education andlearn$ave may have had some impact in changing thistrend.• Immigration status at baseline: Immigration status wasa factor in the education program impacts (as indicatedby daggers in Table 7.3). Those who had immigrated toCanada four or more years prior to entering the projectwere no more likely to enrol in education as a result oflearn$ave than those in the control group. Among newimmigrants, who represent about half the participantsin the experimental sample, participation in educationdid rise (10.7 percent) as a result of learn$ave. However,compared to similar participants in the control group,Canadian-born participants in the project dramaticallyincreased their participation in education when theyreceived the learn$ave-plus or learn$ave-only program,by 18.3 percentage points and 19.4 percentage points,respectively.It is worth noting that recent immigrants had thehighest rate of education participation in the controlgroup (62.4 percent compared to 56 percent for thecontrol group as a whole). Given the overlap between newimmigrants and university degree holders in the sample,a new bivariate subgroup variable was created: educationinteracted with immigrant status. It was hypothesizedearlier that that perhaps a large number of highly educatedimmigrants were using learn$ave to accredit prioreducation obtained abroad. However, while the impactsfor immigrant degree-holders were significant, they werejust barely so, and the impacts were not as large as theywere for Canadian-born participants, with a BA or not(not shown in table). This suggests that immigrants werenot necessarily using learn$ave to “Canadianize” theirforeign PSE credentials.• Saving regularly at baseline: As regular savers areexpected to have a strong orientation toward the future,they should be more inclined to treat education as aninvestment than non regular savers. However, howregularly one saved at baseline did not affect educationenrolment in learn$ave. While, regular savers weremore likely to benefit from learn$ave (16.9 versus 10.8percentage points for non-regular savers), this differencewas not significant in statistical terms (as indicated by thelack of daggers in the table). 3 Nonetheless, these resultsdo show that non-savers can be induced to save and enrolin education or training programs.Impacts on education and training spending and intensityThe research was concerned not only with measuringimpacts on education enrolment but also on how muchparticipants spent on education, how they funded it, andhow much time they invested in it. Estimates of each ofthese impacts are presented in Table 7.4 for all educationstream participants. Note that these are education expendituresfunded from all sources, including participants’own funds.Both learn$ave matched credits, alone and combinedwith the services, resulted in participants spending moreon education and training, particularly in programs ratherthan courses. Over the 54-month period, the learn$avecredits and services together led learn$ave-plus participantsto spend, on average, $2,142 more on educationprograms leading to PSE certification compared to thecontrol group. This total included $1,968 in tuition and$173 in books. The impact was derived not only from thematched credit incentives alone, as the addition of theservices contributed an additional $918 to the overall$2,142 increase in individual spending on education.Though the learn$ave financial management training andenhanced case management services did not have muchincremental impact with regard to education enrolmenton top of the effect of the credits, the positive impactson educational expenditures imply that the services mayhave encouraged members of the learn$ave-plus group toseek out education with greater earnings potential, whichtends to be more costly.As noted, these are educational expenditures fundedby all sources, including the matched saving credits. Anargument could be made for not including this grant towhich the control group did not have access. Indeed,subtracting the average matched saving credits used bythe learn$ave-only and learn$ave-plus groups ($2,342and $2,529, respectively; Chapter 5) would eliminate theimpact on educational expenditures.3 Despite their statistical significance, the estimated impacts should be interpreted with somecaution based as they are on a small non-random sample of those who were regular savers atbaseline (n=279).Social Research and Demonstration Corporation Chapter 7 | 85