The Long-Term Impacts of Child Development Accounts on Parental Educational Expectations and College Preparation

This article reports the long-term effects of child development accounts (CDAs), a policy fostering asset building for all children, on two educational outcomes: parents’ educational expectations and college preparation for their children. We use data from SEED for Oklahoma Kids (SEED OK), a longitudinal, statewide, and randomized social policy experiment. Data from wave 3 of SEED OK were collected during 2020, when the children were approximately 13 years old. Parents in the treatment group of the pre-COVID-19 sample (n=626) exhibited statistically significantly higher levels and durability of educational expectations and a higher level of college preparation compared with control group counterparts. We observed similar findings in the full sample (n=1,556), though the treatment-control difference in educational expectations is not statistically significant. Given the current landscape of college financing, CDAs could serve as one valuable and feasible policy tool for facilitating asset accumulation and mitigating educational disparities.