TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Gallo, Misty
AU  - Wolf, Patrick
AU  - Patrinos, Harry Anthony
        TI  - Increasing Take-Up of Literacy Tutoring: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment
        PY  - 2026/Oct/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 19002
        UR  - https://iza.org/publications/dp19002
        AB  - 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.
        KW  - literacy
KW  - tutoring
KW  - take-up
KW  - nudge
KW  - behavioral economics
KW  - encouragement
KW  - regulatory friction
KW  - parental engagement
KW  - choice
KW  - implementation
        ER  -