By Sébastien Grobon, doctoral student at the Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne (CES) and economist at the Conseil d'Orientation des Retraites (COR), Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

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François-Charles Wolff, Professor of Economics, LEMNA, Nantes University and TEPP

The question of the impact of public aid, and that of the relevance of student aid, seem unavoidable at the moment. Yet little is known about the relationship between public and private student aid, i.e. grants based on social criteria and parental transfers. In a recently published article, we highlight the fact that a student receiving more public aid would see his or her parents' aid decrease. Half of the grant received would be "crowded out" by a drop in parental aid. In this way, bursaries not only increase young people's income, but also enable their families to make fewer sacrifices to finance their studies. Given the targeted nature of scholarships, this is not a sign of inefficiency, especially as in certain cases - not studied in this work - the scholarship can make study possible and trigger greater parental assistance.

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