Our Work
Research
Research
The UCLA CalKIDS Institute engages in research and evaluation about the CalKIDS Program. We work with multiple partners, including the ScholarShare Investment Board, county offices of education, schools and colleges, and community organizations to better understand the experiences of CalKIDS eligible youth and their families, and to understand best practices for encouraging students to learn about, claim, and use their CalKIDS accounts.
The research team has recently published an initial report on one strand of our research: the experiences of the first cohorts of post-secondary students who used funds from their CalKIDS accounts.
In this report we highlight the perceived impact of the CalKIDS accounts on multiple parts of the post-secondary experience of students, such as continuing education and addressing short-term financial needs.
We also stress the importance of finding out about CalKIDS accounts early, as we found a positive relationship between the average impact that having a CalKIDS account had on students’ decisions to continue their education with the amount of time that the students had a CalKIDS account before graduating high school.
Additionally, we underscore the importance of K-12 partnerships in helping young people learn about their CalKIDS accounts, as 43% of study participants reported that they first learned about CalKIDS through their high school.
This research was presented at the California Early Wealth Account System (CEWAS) Summit with Catalina Cifuentes of the Riverside County Office of Education (RCOE), who added onto our research by exploring ways in which RCOE has successfully helped students and families learn about and claim CalKIDS accounts.
In additional research activities, Dr. Mark Hansen, Faculty Director at the UCLA CalKIDS Institute, and Nayiri Nahabedian, Executive Director of the UCLA CalKIDS Institute, recently collaborated with the ScholarShare Investment Board and the California Child Savings Account Coalition to write and publish the California Early Wealth Accounts System (CEWAS) Plan.
The CEWAS Plan suggests a path to strengthen and build on early wealth-building, including the CalKIDS Program, in California. Previously, Mark Hansen and Nayiri Nahabedian also collaborated with Libby Schaaf, providing support for her report: Advancing CalKIDS: Findings & Recommendations for the Nation’s Largest College Savings Account Program.
Ongoing and future research of the uCLA CalKIDS Institute includes a case study of a county office of education with some of the highest rates of CalKIDS accounts claimed in the state of California, to understand best practices for schools to help students claim their accounts. We also are engaging in a scoping literature review of work done on child savings accounts.