A $10 million gift from Jon Gray, global head of real estate at private equity and asset management firm Blackstone Group, and his wife, Mindy, will finance efforts to boost the college attainment rate of low-income children in New York City, the New York Times reports.

The gift will fund a three-year pilot program through which the city will create 529 college savings accounts for about thirty-five hundred kindergartners a year. The program will deposit $100 in each account initially, with accounts eligible to receive another $200 in matching funds over four years if the child's family meets certain benchmarks. To be administered by NYC Kids Rise, a newly established nonprofit organization, the pilot will be launched next fall in one of the city's thirty-two school districts, with children in both traditional public schools and charter schools eligible.

While the program is aimed at introducing low-income families to 529 accounts — which wealthy families are more likely to take advantage of than low-income families — advocates argue that the accounts have an impact beyond their financial benefit, in that they encourage parents to believe their children can go to college. Recently, a randomized controlled trial in Oklahoma found that disadvantaged children who received $1,000 in a 529 account — with incentives for the mother to save more — scored better on a measure of socioemotional development than children without accounts, while both they and their mothers showed fewer symptoms of depression.

Julie Menin, the commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, who conceived of the program in her previous job as the commissioner of consumer affairs, told the Times she was inspired in part by a similar program in San Francisco that establishes an account for every kindergartner in the city's public schools. "I felt that it fit in perfectly with the mission of the de Blasio administration in terms of increasing access and inclusion for low-income New Yorkers," said Menin.

Gray, who reportedly is being considered for the position of treasury secretary in the Trump administration, even though he's a Democrat and supported Hillary Clinton, said he and his wife were attracted to the idea of boosting financial literacy and encouraging saving among low-income families. "I love the idea of democratizing the benefits of long-term investing," he said. "[And if] we have a lot of families saving money, investing, opening up these 529 accounts, that to me and to us would be a sign of real success."