%0 Report
        %A Gallo, Misty
%A Wolf, Patrick
%A Patrinos, Harry Anthony
        %T Increasing Take-Up of Literacy Tutoring: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment
        %D 2026
        %8 2026 Oct
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 19002
        %U https://iza.org/publications/dp19002
        %X Government programs often experience low take-up, limiting their potential positive impact. We examine whether reducing registration frictions can increase participation in a state-financed literacy intervention program. In a randomized field experiment, families received either encouragement and a simplified enrollment process, or these interventions plus text message nudges, relative to a business-as-usual control group. We find that encouragement and simplified registration increased take-up by more than 10 percentage points, while a fuller treatment of encouragement, simplified enrollment, and text nudges increased take-up by 6 percentage points. We also estimate the impact of these treatments to promote use of funding and amount of funding used to access tutoring. We find positive intent-to-treat effects with the fuller treatment showing a strong impact on use and amount of funding used. These low-cost interventions offer a promising strategy for increasing participation in government programs.
        %K literacy
%K tutoring
%K take-up
%K nudge
%K behavioral economics
%K encouragement
%K regulatory friction
%K parental engagement
%K choice
%K implementation