Fictional Money, Real Costs: Impacts of Financial Salience on Disadvantaged Students

Disadvantaged students perform differentially worse when randomly given a financially salient mathematics exam. For with socioeconomic indicators below the national median, 10 percentage point increase in share of monetary themed questions depresses exam performance by 0.026 standard deviations, about 6 percent their gap. Using question-level data, I confirm role financial salience comparing on and highly similar non-monetary questions. Leveraging randomized ordering questions, identify an effect subsequent providing evidence that attention capture effects poverty affect policy relevant outcomes outside experimental settings. (JEL G53, I21, I24, I32, J13, O15)