The Post-9/11 GI Bill brought about the largest expansion in veteran education benefits since the end of World War II, increasing annual benefit expenditures from $3 billion to more than $13 billion. Leveraging variation over time, geography, and type of veterans, I explore the effect of financial aid on degree attainment. I find that the aid expansion increased degree attainment by 5–6 percentage points (25%), roughly 0.4 percentage points per $1,000 of additional maximum aid. These findings indicate that financial aid can increase degree attainment, even for individuals with high levels of initial support.
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Andrew Barr (2018) studied this question.
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