Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Roundtable: Behavioral Nudges: Cost-Effective Policy or Government Overreach?

(Education)

Across various policy domains, while progress has been made in some areas (e.g. reducing the Black-White academic achievement gap in education), existing interventions have failed to remedy other long-standing inequalities. In education, achievement gaps between low- and high-income high school students are 40 percent wider today than they were a decade ago, and socioeconomic disparities in college completion between poor and affluent young adults have grown more pronounced over time (Bailey and Dynarski, 2012; Reardon, 2011). Stubborn challenges also persist with long-term unemployment. Just over a year ago, there were nearly four million individuals who were unemployed for greater than six months. Only one in ten of those individuals will have found a permanent full-time job by now (Krueger et al., 2014). In many settings, existing resources and programs intended to improve outcomes in these areas are not fully utilized. For instance, nearly one in ten college students who would qualify for need-based grant assistance does not complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, and one in six college freshmen who receive a Pell Grant and succeeding academically fails to successfully renew their financial aid (Bird and Castleman, forthcoming; King, 2004). Recent behavioral science research highlights the various barriers that can prevent people from accessing beneficial programs and resources: complicated applications, complex eligibility rules and requirements, poorly communicated deadlines, and insufficient outreach and publicity. Behavioral nudges have emerged as a low-cost strategy to connect people to existing resources and opportunities that might not otherwise be available to them. Nudges have been applied in numerous policy areas, from helping people save more for retirement to encouraging people to reduce home energy use (Alcott, 2011; Madrian and Shea, 2001). In the context of education, researchers have leveraged behavioral insights to encourage parents to read to their children, to increase assignment completion among middle and high school students, and to remind college freshmen to renew financial aid (Bergman, 2013; Castleman and Page, forthcoming; York and Loeb, 2015). Experimental evaluations of nudge strategies in education demonstrate that they can generate meaningful improvements in students’ achievement and attainment, often at a cost of only several dollars per student. Yet as nudges increase in popularity among policy makers at every level of government, several important questions merit discussion: •Do the results of these early nudge interventions replicate in other context and settings? •Do nudge campaigns generate longer-term benefits, or do effects fade out over time? •Are nudges distorting students’ choices about the educational pathways they pursue, potentially leading to outcomes that don’t align with the students’ goals? •Is it the role of government to influence student and family decision-making? This roundtable features researchers and practitioners with extensive experience working within and in partnership with governments on policy development, including the application of behavioral insights. The moderator is the former deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. The roundtable will feature a provocative debate on the role of nudging in public policy, and will actively solicit audience participation in the dialog.