“ Higher Education , Merit - Based Scholarships and Post - Baccalaureate Migration ” Friday , April 12 , 2013 3 : 30 pm . 210 Middlebush

We present new evidence on the effects of merit aid scholarship on residential migration and educational attainment using Census data on all 24 to 32 year olds in the U.S. from 1990 to 2010. Eligibility for merit aid programs slightly increases the propensity of state natives to live in-state, while also extending in-state enrollment into the late twenties. These patterns notwithstanding, the magnitude of merit aid effects is of an order of magnitude smaller than the population treated, suggesting that nearly all of the spending on these programs is transferred to individuals who do not alter educational or migration behavior. JEL Classification: H7, I2, R23 ∗Fitzpatrick: Department of Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University, [email protected]. Jones: Harris School of Public Policy Studies, the Unversity of Chicago and NBER, [email protected]. We would like to thank the Population Research Center at the University of Chicago (grant # R24 HD051152-05 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) for their support. Rebecca Hinze-Pifer provided excellent research assistance. We are extremely grateful to Jeff Groen, Kirabo Jackson, Michael Lovenheim, James Sallee, Sarah Turner and to participants at Cornell University, the University of Chicago, the New York Federal Reserve Board, the 2012 CESIfo Area Conference on the Economics of Education and 2012 SIEPR Young Scholars Conference at Stanford University for helpful comments and discussion. All errors are our own.