Economics Research Seminar – Dr Carmen Villa

Title: Paying Disadvantaged Teenagers to Stay in School

Date: 4 February 2026

Time: 13:30 – 14:30

Venue: NUBS.2.05

If you would like to attend, please register using the following link:

Paying Disadvantaged Teenagers to Stay in School

Speaker:           Dr Carmen Villa

Carmen Villa Llera, Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics of the University of Zurich and the Jacobs Centre for Productive Youth Development. Research Affiliate at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Rockwool Foundation Berlin.

Dr Carmen Villa obtained her PhD in Economics from the University of Warwick in May 2025. She was selected for the EALE Tour 2025. In 2024, she was awarded the British Spanish Society scholarship. In 2023 visited the University of Chicago as a Fulbright US-UK scholar.

https://www.carmenvilla.net/

Paying disadvantaged teenagers to stay in school
IFS Working Paper 25/06, RF Discussion Paper 131-25 with Jack Britton, Nick Ridpath, and Ben Waltmann

Abstract:

We evaluate the Education Maintenance Allowance, a large conditional cash transfer scheme that paid low-income teenagers in England to remain in education beyond age 16. Using the staggered national roll-out of the program and linked administrative data tracking education, earnings, welfare payments and criminal convictions to age 31, we find no significant overall effect of the policy on labor market outcomes or criminality. High-attaining students were more likely to attend university but no more likely to graduate. Low-attaining students committed fewer crimes. Point estimates suggest the overall Marginal Value of Public Funds was below one, indicating low cost-effectiveness.

 

 

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