Title: Promoting Saving for College Through Data Science,
Abstract: The cost of attending college has been steadily rising and in 10 years is
estimated to reach $140,000 for a 4-year public university. Recent surveys
estimate just over half of US families are saving for college. State-operated
529 college savings plans are an effective way for families to plan and save
for future college costs, but only 3% of families currently use them. The
Office of the Illinois State Treasurer (Treasurer) administers two 529 plans to
help its residents save for college. In order to increase the number of
families saving for college, the Treasurer and Civis Analytics used data
science techniques to identify the people most likely to sign up for a college
savings plan. In this paper, we will discuss the use of person matching to join
accountholder data from the Treasurer to the Civis National File, as well as
the use of lookalike modeling to identify new potential signups. In order to
avoid reinforcing existing demographic imbalances in who saves for college, the
lookalike models used were ensured to be racially and economically balanced. We
will also discuss how these new signup targets were then individually served
digital ads to encourage opening college savings accounts.