Racial, ethnic, and gender differences in postsecondary financial aid awards

This article presents a decomposition technique for a Tobit regression model with a lower bound. It shows that Tobit coefficients can be decomposed into two effects: (1) the effect of the independent variables on the amount of financial aid awards for students who receive financial aid; and (2) the effect of the independent variables on the probability of receiving financial aid for those students who do not receive financial aid. The information gained by the decomposition technique contributes to a clearer understanding of the effects of selected factors on financial aid awards. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.