Sources of educational inequality and redistributive behavior: Experimental evidence

Last registered on December 11, 2022

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Beliefs in Educational Meritocracy, Tolerance of Inequality, and Social Cohesion

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0009717

Initial registration date

July 08, 2022

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

July 08, 2022, 12:09 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated

December 11, 2022, 9:22 AM EST

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country

United States of America

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Ines Lee

Affiliation

University of Cambridge

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Eileen Tipoe

PI Affiliation

Queen Mary University of London

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

Completed

Start date

2022-07-08

End date

2022-08-12

Keywords

Behavior, Education, Labor

Additional Keywords

Inequality, Meritocracy, Policy preferences, Survey experiment

JEL code(s)

C91, D63, D83, D91, I24

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

We provide causal evidence on how beliefs in educational meritocracy affect tolerance of education-based inequality and attitudes towards the less-educated. Educational meritocracy is the idea that academic success indicates individual merit (e.g. hard work, effort, talent) rather than external circumstances (e.g. parental background, race, sex). We first elicit participants’ beliefs about how college attendance varies by socioeconomic status. Half of the participants will then receive the actual statistics, taken from Chetty et al. (2020). We then measure participants’ support for reducing income inequality between college and non-college graduates, attitudes towards the less-educated, support for educational reform policies, and willingness to donate to charities that promote access to higher education.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Lee, Ines and Eileen Tipoe. 2022. "Beliefs in Educational Meritocracy, Tolerance of Inequality, and Social Cohesion." AEA RCT Registry. December 11. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.9717-2.0

Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Intervention Start Date

2022-07-08

Intervention End Date

2022-08-12

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

(1) Preferred earnings gap between college and non-college graduates
(2) Charitable donations
(3) Support for policies that reduce barriers to attending college
(4) Implicit attitudes towards less-educated

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

(1) Preferred earnings gap between college and non-college graduates: Participants will be given the current income disparity between the average college graduate and average non-college graduate and asked what they think the income disparity between these two individuals should be.

(2) Charitable donations: Participants will be told they have been automatically enrolled in a lottery for $100 and, if they win, they can choose to donate some (or all or none) of their winnings to a charity whose primary mission is to tackle inequalities in educational attainment at the tertiary level.

(3) Support for policies that reduce financial barriers to attending college: Participants are provided with information on a policy that aims to reduce financial barriers to attending college (expanding the size of the Pell Grant, encouraging colleges to offer automatic application fee waivers for low-income students). They are then asked how much they would support the given policy.

(4) Implicit attitudes towards less-educated: Participants take a novel version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT), designed for this study. This version of the IAT, designed for this study, assesses the ease with which participants make pleasant or unpleasant associations between typically white male names, which are either listed with or without an educational qualification (e.g. BSc, J.D., PhD).

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

We first elicit participants’ beliefs about inequality in college attendance, measured by the percentage of 4-year-college attendees in a given birth cohort who grew up in each quintile of the income distribution. Using a between-subjects design, we then randomly allocate participants to a treatment or control group. The treatment group receives information about the true percentages of college attendees who grew up in households whose income is in the bottom or top quintile of the distribution. The control group receives information about college attendees that is unrelated to meritocracy in educational attainment. Both sets of information are computed using deidentified administrative data by Chetty et al. (2020).

We then measure three self-reported outcomes (the preferred wage ratio between college and non-college graduates, attitudes towards the less-educated, support for policies that reduce financial barriers to attending college), and one real outcome (the choice to make an actual donation to an education-related charity). We also ask questions to understand the mechanisms through which the information treatment affects these outcomes.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomizer in Qualtrics with the option "evenly present elements".

Randomization Unit

Individual

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

4200 individuals

Sample size: planned number of observations

4200 individuals

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

2100 people in each treatment

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

3780 participants will give us 0.8 power to detect an effect size of 0.10 of a standard deviation between the treatment and the control group in the main study at a .05 significance level. Therefore, the 4200 participants from the main study will give us more than 0.8 power to detect the same effect size.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name

University of Cambridge Faculty of Economics Research Ethics Committee

IRB Approval Date

2022-05-23

IRB Approval Number

UCAM-FoE-22-01

Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

Educational Meritocracy Pre-Analysis Plan

MD5: c387751aadf6e9808dbab6916ad76fe1

SHA1: ceebbd063dea06f4043b5ca1f3b694e9c1bbd284

Uploaded At: July 08, 2022

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?

Yes

Intervention Completion Date

August 10, 2022, 12:00 +00:00

Data Collection Complete

Yes

Data Collection Completion Date

August 10, 2022, 12:00 +00:00

Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)

2,008

Was attrition correlated with treatment status?

Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations