Biography: Juliana Londoño-Vélez is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, an NBER Faculty Research Fellow, a J-PAL Affiliate, and a Faculty Affiliate at CCPR and CEGA. Juliana works on inequality and redistributive tax and transfer policies, with a particular interest in developing countries.

Title: “Financial Aid and Social Mobility: Evidence from Colombia’s Ser Pilo Paga.”

Abstract: “We study the effects of financial aid on human capital and social mobility. In 2014, Colombia implemented a nationwide financial aid program covering the tuition of four-year undergraduate programs at 33 “high-quality” universities. We estimate effects on educational and labor market outcomes realized seven years after high school completion. We leverage the program’s discontinuous assignment rules based on test scores and household poverty using a regression discontinuity design and identify effects away from these discontinuities using difference-in-differences. First, financial aid has a long-lasting expansion of college access and quality, exposing students to colleges with high learning and earnings productivity. Moreover, it boosts social mobility by expanding college attainment, learning, and earnings and slashes the wealth gaps in attainment, learning, and earnings among equally-achieving students. Crucially, these sizable benefits are not offset by corresponding losses for nonrecipients. As a result, financial aid improves both equity and efficiency. Thanks to financial aid, colleges act as “engines of social mobility” rather than as “bastions of privilege.”