Channeling Remittances to Education: A Field Experiment Among Migrants from El Salvador

This paper was previously circulated under the title "Subsidizing Remittances for Education." Ambler: Markets, Trade, and Institutions Division, International Food Policy Research Institute (k.ambler@cgiar.org). Aycinena: Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Universidad Francisco Marroquin (diegoaa@ufm.edu). Yang (corresponding author): Department of Economics and Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan, NBER, and BREAD (deanyang@umich.edu). Jessica Snyder and Kevin Carney, our Innovations for Poverty Action project associates, deserve special thanks for superb work on all aspects of project implementation and data management. We greatly appreciate the support and feedback of Luis Alejos Marroquín, Oriana Bandiera, Ana de Bardi, Paul Dwyer, Daniel Gottschalk, Patricia Guinea de Solorzano, Gabriela Inchauste, Celia Medrano, Moy Pascual de Velasco, Enilson Solano, Eugenia Suay de Castrillo, and seminar participants at Columbia University, the Inter-American Development Bank, Queens College, Central Michigan University, NEUDC 2013, and the NBER Education Program meeting at the Chicago Fed (November 2013). This project would not have been possible without the collaboration of Fundación Empresarial para el Desarrollo Educativo (FEPADE), Viamericas Corporation, and the Salvadoran consulates in Woodbridge, VA and Washington, DC. This study was funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (contract C0016-11) and by the University of Michigan's Population Studies Center. Ambler acknowledges support from an NICHD training grant to the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan (T32 HD007339). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.