%0 Journal Article
%T Pell Grant Versus Income Data in Postsecondary Research
%A Karly S. Ford
%A Kelly Ochs Rosinger
%J Educational Researcher
%@ 1935-102X
%D 2019
%R 10.3102/0013189X19852102
%X Given growing disparities in college enrollment by household income, policymakers and researchers often are interested in understanding whether policies expand access for low-income students. In this brief, we highlight the limitations of a commonly available measure of low-income status¡ªwhether students receive a federal Pell grant¡ªand compare it to new data on enrollment by income quintile to evaluate a recent policy effort within elite colleges aimed at expanding access. We demonstrate that Pell is a rough measure of low-income status and that without more detailed data on colleges¡¯ economic diversity, policy evaluations focusing on existing Pell data will suffer from measurement error and potentially miss enrollment effects for moderate- and high-income students
%K admissions
%K college access
%K econometric analysis
%K education policy
%K Pell grant
%K policy analysis
%K postsecondary education
%K quasi-experimental analysis
%K social class
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0013189X19852102