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Financial Literacy and Financial Education: An Overview

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 11070
2024
April 2024

Financial Literacy and

Financial Education:
An Overview
Tim Kaiser, Annamaria Lusardi
Impressum:

CESifo Working Papers

ISSN 2364-1428 (electronic version)
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 CESifo Working Paper No. 11070

Financial Literacy and Financial Education:

An Overview

Abstract

This article provides a concise narrative overview of the rapidly growing empirical literature on
financial literacy and financial education. We first discuss stylized facts on the demographic
correlates of financial literacy. We next cover the evidence on the effects of financial literacy on
financial behaviors and outcomes. Finally, we review the evidence on the causal effects of
financial education programs focusing on randomized controlled trial evaluations. The article
concludes with perspectives on future research priorities for both financial literacy and financial
education.
JEL-Codes: G530, D140.
Keywords: financial education, financial literacy, financial behavior.

Tim Kaiser Annamaria Lusardi

University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU) SIEPR & Stanford Graduate School of
Germany – 76829 Landau Business, Stanford / CA / USA
[email protected] [email protected]

April 2024
We thank Luis Oberrauch for excellent research assistance and Allen N. Berger, Phil Molyneux,
and John O.S. Wilson for helpful comments. All errors are our own.
 1 Introduction

Globalization and the increasing complexity of the economic landscape have placed

financial literacy and financial education on policymakers’ agendas. Globally, individuals and

households face a wide array of financial products and options, making the understanding of

basic financial concepts increasingly important. The increase in inflation further underlines the

importance of financial literacy in navigating complex financial markets. With the advent of

new technologies, such as digital transactions, online banking, and crypto assets, financial

literacy is also critical for scam avoidance and wise money management. Additionally, the shift

away from traditional pension schemes and toward individualized retirement accounts in many

countries places additional responsibility on individuals to secure their future.

In the U.S., the last decade has also seen a sharp rise in student loan debt, emphasizing

the need for young people to comprehend loan terms and repayment options. Additionally,

increasing healthcare costs reinforce the need for sound financial planning and a

comprehensive understanding of insurance policies. Hence, fostering financial literacy (i.e.,

domain-specific human capital related to personal finance) through financial education is

expected to empower individuals to make informed decisions and improve their financial well-

being in the US and around the world.

A large and growing body of literature documents the importance of financial literacy

and financial education. Over 7,000 publications in peer-reviewed academic journals have been

indexed in the Social Science Citation Index (Clarivate Analytics) over the past fifteen years.

In 2022 alone, there have been over 1,300 publications attracting more than twenty thousand

citations. Research on financial literacy is now conducted in many countries and in a variety

of disciplines. Moreover, financial literacy has become an established field of study in the

academic economics profession, with its own Journal of Economic Literature code (G53).

2
 This paper provides a concise overview of the large body of financial literacy and

financial education literature. A narrative literature review of this type must be selective and

limited in scope: As we cannot cover all available studies, we present the reader with a curated

discussion of selected high-impact papers in this field. As such, this review complements the

existing literature reviews and discussion articles on this topic (e.g., Xu and Zia 2012; Hastings

et al. 2013; Lusardi and Mitchell 2014, 2023; Zia 2023) as well as the quantitative meta-

analyses in this field (e.g., Fernandes et al. 2014; Miller et al. 2015; Kaiser and Menkhoff 2017,

2020; Kaiser et al. 2022). We intend to give the reader a concise summary of the state of the

empirical evidence and to highlight gaps and questions worthy of future research. Using the

most recent wave of the National Financial Capability Study (NFCS), a large-scale survey of

over 25,000 adult U.S. respondents, we discuss some descriptive statistics that help set the

stage and highlight areas for further work.

This paper has four sections: First, we document some stylized facts on the

demographic correlates of financial literacy. Second, we summarize the empirical evidence on

the relationship among financial literacy, financial behavior, and outcomes. Third, we

summarize the evidence on the causal effects of financial education programs in impact

evaluation studies. We conclude by discussing research priorities and topics to be covered in

future research, highlighting areas for further exploration.

2 Measurement and demographic correlates of financial literacy

Measurement of financial literacy. Stylized facts on the level of financial literacy and

its heterogeneity are based on large-scale and representative household surveys conducted in

many countries (see Lusardi and Mitchell 2011a, 2014, 2023). Most of the empirical evidence

is based on a short but informative three-item measure of financial literacy, i.e., what has

3
become known as the “Big Three.”1 These questions measure understanding of basic financial

concepts (i.e., compound interest, inflation, and risk diversification) and have been mainly

designed with the aim of minimal response burden as well as adequate reliability and

discrimination (see Lusardi and Mitchell 2014, 2023). They were also designed to embody

broad rather than context-specific concepts, allowing researchers to administer these items in

numerous countries. Recent work has demonstrated the sound psychometric properties of this

measurement scale, including evidence on construct validity, temporal stability, and predictive

validity of the test items (see Angrisani et al. 2023; Kaiser et al. 2023a). The rapid development

of financial literacy as a field of study can be largely explained by the ability to measure basic

financial literacy levels with a small number of survey questions (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2023).

The following discussion of the stylized facts is based mainly on empirical evidence

relying on the “Big Three.” However, we will also discuss literature relying on more extensive

measures of financial literacy.

Low levels of financial literacy around the world. The empirical evidence shows that

financial literacy cannot be taken for granted, even in countries with well-developed financial

markets or the G7 countries. Overall, only half of the population or even less, in most countries,

is knowledgeable about the basic concepts covered in the “Big Three.”

The gender gap in financial literacy. One of the most striking empirical regularities is

the gender gap in financial literacy favoring men, i.e., women perform worse than men on

financial literacy assessments (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2011a, 2014). This gender gap has been

replicated on every continent and in as many as 135 of the 144 countries covered in the S&P

Ratings Service Global Financial Literacy survey (Global Finlit Survey) (Grohmann 2016;

1
See Hastings, Madrian, and Skimmyhorn (2013). In addition to these well-established and widely used items, there
have been numerous other measurement scales targeted to different audiences: The National Financial Capability Study
(NFCS) administers a longer battery of questions, also known as the Big Five. A global survey on financial literacy has been
administered across more than 140 countries (Klapper and Lusardi, 2020). Similarly, the PISA financial literacy assessment
tests domain-specific problem-solving abilities among 15-year-old students and relies on both multiple-choice and open-ended
items to measure this latent trait (Lusardi, 2015). Additionally, many impact evaluation studies also rely on test instruments
designed to cover specific curricula.

4
Klapper and Lusardi 2020). Even after controlling for differences in education, income, and

other demographic characteristics, a substantial share of the gender gap remains unexplained

(Fonseca et al. 2012; Grohmann 2016). Gender differences are already present among the

young (Lusardi, Mitchell, and Curto, 2010), and after adjusting for gender-specific

heterogeneity in test-taking effort, the gender gap in financial literacy can also be observed

among 15-year-old students (Oberrauch and Kaiser 2023).

While the gender gap can be considered a stylized fact in the literature, its roots are less

well understood. Among candidates are the effects of parental inputs (Bottazzi and Lusardi

2020), intra-household dynamics (Fonseca et al. 2012) as well as cultural characteristics and

prevalent stereotypes (Bottazzi and Lusardi 2020; Driva et al. 2016; Tinghög et al. 2021).

Another possible explanation is that women may be less confident in answering financial

literacy questions, as exemplified by their much higher propensity to answer ‘I do not know,’

particularly when faced with complex questions (Bucher-Koenen et al. 2021). More research

is needed on the reasons for these pervasive gender differences.

Age and financial literacy. Many empirical studies document an inverse u-shape

relationship between age and financial literacy, i.e., financial literacy increases with age (at a

decreasing rate) up to a point and then decreases (Lusardi and Mitchell 2011a; Finke et al.

2017). This fact is consistent with theoretical models endogenizing financial literacy as a form

of investment in human capital, with benefits but also costs of doing so (Lusardi et al. 2017).

The decline in older ages reflects the effects of less investment in financial literacy and the

depreciation of knowledge.

Cognitive ability and education. Naturally, one would expect specific human capital

(such as financial literacy) to be correlated with broader human capital and educational

attainment (Lusardi and Mitchell 2014, 2023). Based on data from the U.S., financial literacy

is especially low for those without a college degree (Lusardi and Mitchell 2011b, 2023).

5
Obviously, a positive correlation between education and financial literacy does not imply a

causal effect of education attainment on financial literacy, as both could be a function of general

cognitive ability (Callis et al. 2023). An extensive literature has studied the effects of general

cognitive ability and education on financial decision-making (e.g., Christelis et al. 2010;

Agarwal and Mazumder 2013; Cole et al. 2014). Overall, it seems advisable to adjust for

differences in general cognitive ability. However, while studies have shown that general

cognitive ability and numeracy are correlated, much of the heterogeneity in financial literacy

remains unexplained (Lusardi et al. 2010).

Replicating demographic correlates in new data. We study these demographic

correlates in the most recent (2021) wave of the National Financial Capability Study (NFCS)

by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Investor Education Foundation. The

NFCS is a large-scale data collection effort, and each wave includes data from more than

25,000 adults across all 50 U.S. states and Washington D.C. Like many other studies, we use

the “Big Three” to study the correlates of financial literacy in this representative sample of U.S.

adults. Table 1 reports the relevant descriptive statistics.

< Table 1 about here >

Fifty-four percent of respondents are female, 26 percent are adults belonging to minorities, and

53.6 percent report no college degree. Only about 14 percent report having received financial

education in school. Other descriptive statistics regarding income, age, and marital status

reported in Table 1 follow what one would expect from a representative US household survey.

We now turn to studying the demographic correlates of financial literacy scores ((see Figure

1).

< Figure 1 about here >

Figure 1 shows unstandardized regression coefficients from a model regressing

financial literacy (standardized to have a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one) on the

6
demographic correlates listed in Table 1. As documented in the previous literature, the most

recent wave of the NFCS continues to document a gender gap favoring men in the order of

magnitude of 0.3 SD units. Additionally, minorities score about 0.19 SD units lower than

Whites in financial literacy, and those without a college degree score about 0.23 units lower

than those with a college education. There is some evidence that married individuals score

slightly lower than those in informal relationships or living alone, that retirees score slightly

higher than those working, and that individuals who are less risk averse score higher. There

also is a strong positive relationship between age and financial literacy and income and

financial literacy, respectively.

Intersectionality. Given that we have such a rich and large data set, we can study in

more detail the evidence for intersectionality, i.e., interaction effects between the demographic

variables (tables available on request). Specifically, we do not observe varying patterns in the

relationship between income levels and financial literacy when comparing genders. However,

we did notice that, for minority groups and individuals without a college degree, the disparities

in financial literacy become less marked at higher income levels (above $100,000). These

interaction effects are statistically significant at the 10-percent level, but they do not follow a

clear pattern across different income brackets and sometimes do not appear at all.

In terms of age-related differences, the gender gap in financial literacy widens with age.

For working-age adults, the financial literacy gap between white individuals and minorities is

narrower. Additionally, the difference in financial literacy between those with and without a

college degree is most noticeable among older people (aged 65 and above). When examining

the combined effects of gender with minority status and education, we found no intersectional

effects between gender and minority status. However, there is a moderately strong interaction

between gender and lack of college education—suggesting that women without a college

degree experience a more significant gender gap in financial literacy. When examining the two-

7
way interaction effects of gender with minority status and education, we found no interaction

effects between gender and minority status but a moderate interaction between gender and lack

of college education, suggesting a more pronounced gender gap among those without a college

degree.

3 The effects of financial literacy on financial behaviors and outcomes

In this section, we highlight selected research work on the effects of financial literacy

on household financial behaviors and outcomes. Identifying the causal effects of financial

literacy on financial behaviors, such as retirement saving or stock market participation, in

observational data presents several challenges. The main concern is that the association

between financial literacy and financial behavior might not reflect a causal relationship due to

several potential issues, including endogeneity and selection bias. Endogeneity arises when

financial literacy scores are correlated with the regression model’s error term. This could

happen if there are variables that affect both financial literacy and financial behaviors but are

not included in the model. For instance, inherent characteristics such as cognitive ability,

preferences, personal motivation, confidence, perceived skills, and interest in financial matters

may influence a person's financial literacy and financial behaviors, but these characteristics are

rarely present as variables in existing data sets (e.g., Allgood and Walstad 2016; Andersen et

al. 2018). Endogeneity can also result from reverse causality, where the dependent variable

(financial behavior) influences the explanatory variable (financial literacy). For instance, it

might be that participating in the stock market or starting to save for retirement improves one's

financial literacy rather than the other way around.

Using instrumental variables (IVs) estimation is a common strategy to address

endogeneity (see, e.g., Angrist and Krueger 2001). An instrumental variable is a variable that

is assumed to be correlated with the explanatory variable (financial literacy) but uncorrelated

8
with the error term in the regression model. In practice, finding a suitable instrument (or

instruments) for financial literacy is challenging and requires strong assumptions: the

instrument must be correlated with financial literacy but must not be correlated with the error

term in the model, meaning it should not directly influence the financial behavior, except

through its impact on financial literacy (i.e., the exclusion restriction). Furthermore, the

interpretation of IV estimates can sometimes be difficult. In the presence of heterogeneous

effects, IV estimation identifies the effect for the subpopulation of individuals whose financial

literacy is influenced by the instrument. This effect may be different from the effect for the

whole population, which is often what researchers and policymakers may be most interested in

(see Mogstad and Torgovitsky 2018 for an excellent overview of this discussion).

Despite the strong assumptions and more nuanced interpretation required, several

studies have implemented instrumental variables strategies and found compelling evidence that

financial literacy has a causal effect on financial behaviors and outcomes. One obvious strategy

is to rely on past (non-voluntary) exposure to mandated financial education in school or the

workplace. Several studies used this type of plausibly exogenous instrument (sometimes

combined with other instrumental variables) (see Fernandes et al. 2014). Other examples

include the financial financial situation of the oldest sibling in comparison to the financial

situation of the respondent (van Rooij et al. 2011), bank information policies (Fort et al. 2016),

education policies, macroeconomic conditions, and family background (Behrman et al. 2012),

as well as the cost of learning and acquiring financial knowledge (proxied by an economics

degree of parents) (Fornero and Monticone 2011). Recently, studies have combined

instruments such as exposure to economics education and the financial situation of the oldest

sibling with heteroskedasticity-based identification, making it possible to test overidentifying

restrictions in settings where researchers previously may only have included a single

instrumental variable (Deuflhardt 2018).

9
 While many of these instruments pass relevance tests (and show adequate Hansen J

statistics in many empirical applications), the exclusion restriction remains a strong assumption

in some cases. Thus, while we deem much of this evidence to be credibly causal, we also

encourage readers to exercise some caution in interpreting the findings based on observational

data. Below, we describe some of the most cited findings.

Retirement planning, (retirement) savings, and investment behavior. One of the

canonical findings in many countries (both advanced and emerging economies) is that financial

literacy affects retirement planning and (retirement) savings both at the extensive and intensive

margin (e.g., Bernheim and Garret 2003; Lusardi and Mitchell 2007a,b, 2008, 2011b; Alessie

et al. 2011; Almenberg and Säve-Söderbergh 2011; Bucher-Koenen and Lusardi 2011; Cole et

al. 2011; Fornero and Monticone 2011; van Rooij et al. 2012; Boisclair et al. 2017; Clark et al.

2017).

People with higher financial literacy have more wealth not just because they are able to

plan and save more but also because they get better returns on their savings, even via basic

financial instruments. For example, Deuflhardt et al. (2018) study the effect of financial literacy

on savings account returns. They find that a one-standard-deviation increase in financial

literacy scores is associated with an increase in the interest rate on the account due to greater

usage of online bank accounts offering more favorable conditions.

Similarly, there is robust evidence that financial literacy is positively associated with

stock market participation (van Rooij et al. 2011; Almenberg and Dreber 2015; Clark et al.

2017), portfolio diversification, and portfolio returns (Bianchi 2018; von Gaudecker 2015).

Additionally, the effects of financial literacy on retirement saving behavior do not seem limited

to the individual but also generate positive externalities (Haliassos et al. 2019).

Financial literacy and debt behavior. While there are many studies assessing the effects

of financial literacy on assets and wealth, less attention has been paid to the effects on

10
household debt. Exceptions include Lusardi and Tufano (2015) and Lusardi, Mitchell, and

Oggero (2020), which find that individuals with limited financial literacy face higher costs of

borrowing, report concerns about excessive debt, or have difficulty assessing their debt

situations and carry debt into retirement. Similarly, Disney and Gathergood (2013) and Klapper

et al. (2013) find a positive correlation between financial literacy and the cost of borrowing.

Gathergood (2012) finds that financial literacy and self-control measures are correlated with

consumer over-indebtedness. Relatedly, Gerardi et al. (2013) find that numerical ability (an

aspect closely related to financial literacy) is predictive of mortgage default.

Replicating these patterns in new data. As for the demographic correlates of financial

literacy, we now test these empirical regularities in the most recent wave of the NFCS.

< Table 2 about here >

This dataset contains rich data on financial behaviors, and we show regression results

on the financial outcomes considered in many studies, including “retirement planning,” i.e.,

whether the respondent has ever tried to figure out how much they need to save for retirement;

financial fragility, i.e., how confident a respondent is that they could come up with $2,000 in a

month; “credit record,” i.e., how the respondent would rate their credit record on a scale from

1 (very bad) to 5 (very good); and subjective debt assessment, i.e., whether the respondent

agrees with the statement “I have too much debt right now” on a scale from 1 (strongly

disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). To address the potential endogeneity between financial literacy

and behaviors, we complement the OLS results (Columns 1 to 5 of Table 2) with IV

regressions: the financial literacy score based on the “Big Three” questions is instrumented by

a dummy on whether the respondent was exposed to financial education in school, 0 otherwise.

This instrument is plausibly exogenous as much of the variation of this variable stems from the

availability of financial education mandates at the state level (see Urban et al. 2020). Column

5 shows the first-stage results, suggesting that the instrument is relevant: those exposed to

11
financial education in school score about 0.15 SD units higher on the “Big Three.”

Accordingly, the first-stage F-statistic of about 50 is sufficiently large at conventional levels

(see Andrews et al. 2019 for a discussion of weak instruments and first-stage screening).

We find that both OLS and IV estimates result in a positive relationship between

financial literacy scores and outcomes such as retirement planning and the self-reported credit

record. Moreover, financial literacy is negatively correlated with financial fragility and

reporting “too much debt.” Thus, we are able to replicate stylized facts in this more recent data

as well.

We check for heterogenous effects of financial literacy on financial behaviors by

splitting the sample by gender, college education, and minority status and rerunning the OLS

and IV regressions for the financial behaviors discussed above.

< Table 3 about here >

Table 3 shows OLS regressions (Panel A) and the IV-set-up discussed above (Panel B)

in the subsamples of females only, those without a college degree only, and non-whites (i.e.,

minority status). The direction and magnitudes of the effects of financial literacy on financial

behaviors mirror the results in the pooled sample: there is no evidence of heterogeneity, and

the equality of coefficients cannot be rejected in any sub-groups.

4 The causal effects of financial education programs

While observational data can provide useful insights into the relationship between

financial literacy and financial behaviors, identifying the causal effect of financial literacy on

financial behavior is fraught with complications, even when more sophisticated estimation

methods than OLS are used. Thus, we turn now to another strand of the literature: experimental

and quasi-experimental evaluations of the effects of financial education programs. If financial

literacy is important and consequential, financial education programs should be able to affect

behavior. Here, what is of interest is usually the causal effect of being offered participation in

12
a financial education program via random assignment (i.e., the intention to treat). Some studies

also quantify the effect on the compliers (i.e., the local average treatment effect), which can be

interpreted as the effect of receiving the financial education program when assuming that the

mere invitation or offering itself has no effect on the outcome.

Evidence from natural experiments. Since the inception of this literature, economists

have been interested in the causal effects of policy interventions designed to foster individuals’

financial literacy. The fact that financial literacy is so low, as reported in many of the studies

described above, calls for policy and programs to advance financial literacy, but how effective

are they? It is important to look at that evidence first because, in the face of widespread

illiteracy, it is evident that interventions need to be robust to be able to have some effects.

Evidence from natural policy experiments, such as financial education mandates for high

school students in the U.S., suggest long-term improvements in their financial literacy and

behaviors. These studies use spatial and temporal variation in the timing of the mandates to

identify causal effects on financial behaviors. Specifically, mandates have been found to

increase financial literacy scores (Tennyson and Nguyen 2001), increase saving outcomes

(Bernheim et al. 2001), reduce household debt (Brown et al. 2016), boost credit scores, and

decrease default rates (Brown et al. 2016; Urban et al. 2020), and reduces the cost of student

loans (Stoddard and Urban 2020). Additionally, empirical evidence shows that students from

states with school mandates have higher student loan repayment rates (Mangrum 2022),

reduced use of alternative financial lending among the young, and increased account ownership

among individuals with low education (Harvey 2019). At the same time, these mandates do not

appear to cause adverse outcomes such as a reduction in high school graduation rates (Urban

2022). However, other studies do not report such positive outcomes (see Cole et al. 2016). In

addition, Harvey and Urban (2023) find no effect of the mandates on retirement planning,

13
suggesting that the mandates may have a larger effect on outcomes that are more immediate

and relevant to students.

While previous evidence on workplace financial education reported relatively small or

muted effects, more recent works show more promise, probably because the programs are more

robust than sending employees to a benefit fair or exposing them to one retirement seminar or

a retirement brochure (see the review and discussion in Lusardi and Mitchell, 2014). For

example, Skimmyhorn (2016) exploits the staggered rollout of a financial education program

in the U.S. Army and shows that the course reduced credit card balances and arrears and

persistently increased retirement saving rates. Recently, Hvidberg (2022) studied a related

treatment: Exposure to economic education in the context of higher education programs in

Denmark. He finds large effects on reductions of loan defaults and arrears.

The benefit of this literature is the external validity and nature of the policies studied:

As these mandates and programs are operated at scale, they are likely to reflect the true effect

of financial education policies in the respective population. However, natural experiments also

come with additional identifying assumptions, which are not always easy to probe. Thus, we

now turn to what is sometimes referred to as the gold standard of impact evaluation and causal

inference: Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs).

Evidence of the effects of financial education from RCTs. While there have been

numerous impact evaluations relying on non-random assignment of individuals into programs

(for example, employing propensity score matching or other techniques to account for selection

on observables), the available meta-evidence suggests that estimates of the causal effects

generated in these types of studies appear inflated and not very precise (see Fernandes et al.

2014; Kaiser and Menkhoff 2017, 2020, for meta-analyses including quasi experiments). Thus,

we limit discussion of the causal effects of financial education programs to those studied in

RCTs. They are expected to represent the most rigorous evidence, with little debate regarding

14
internal validity when the random assignment protocol was followed and when post-attrition

sample composition does not compromise the experiment's integrity. In recent years, RCTs

have become the modal way to evaluate financial education curricula in a variety of settings.

The next section discusses the evidence from the most recent meta-analysis of RCTs as well as

examples of well-executed primary studies.

Evidence from Meta-Analyses. The first meta-analysis of this literature (Fernandes et

al. 2014) included only 13 RCTs mainly reporting on light-touch interventions, such as

information provision via brochures or workplace fairs. While the paper also studied quasi-

experiments and endogeneity concerns in observational studies, it was most often cited as

evidence of the general ineffectiveness of financial education in improving individual financial

behavior. Following this work were three additional meta-analyses of financial education

programs: one by Miller et al. (2015) and two by Kaiser and Menkhoff (2017 and 2020). These

analyses provide a more nuanced interpretation of the effectiveness of financial education,

contrasting Fernandes et al.'s 2014 analysis, as they integrate more studies and consider the

many differences in both program implementation and results. Nonetheless, each of these

successive analyses had their own limitations. For example, the 2015 study by Miller et al.

conducts a statistical meta-analysis on less than twenty studies, only seven being RCTs, with

an emphasis on the varying impacts across types of financial behaviors. Kaiser and Menkhoff

(2017) investigate the associated factors of financial education interventions in (quasi-)

experimental settings, while Kaiser and Menkhoff (2020) analyzed (quasi-) experimental

studies of financial education within school settings only. Since then, the number of rigorous

RCTs has grown exponentially and the most recent meta-analysis of the causal evidence relies

on treatment effect estimates from as many as 76 RCTs (Kaiser et al. 2022), and the number of

RCTs continues to grow each year. The main takeaways from the more recent meta-analyses

relying on updated evidence and on many studies are summarized below.

15
 First, financial education, on average, has a causal effect on financial literacy scores.

The average intervention boosts financial literacy scores by about 15 to 20 percent of a standard

deviation. Second, on average, interventions cause changes in financial behaviors. The average

effect is estimated to be about 6 to 10 percent of a standard deviation. These results are robust

enough to adjust for potential publication selection bias (i.e., authors’ preference to publish

estimates that lie below conventional thresholds for “statistical significance”).

Third, an important insight of these meta-analyses is that treatment effects of

educational interventions are highly heterogenous, as should be expected given the vast

differences we have documented in the data: Any aggregation attempting to form a (precision

weighted) average simply fails to accommodate the vast heterogeneity in true effects (as

opposed to mere sampling error) by these interventions. The heterogeneity parameter is

quantified to be around 1.2 times as large as the average standard error of the reported treatment

effects, indicating that the results of programs hinge critically on contextual features. For

example, treatment effects vary by outcome type studied, with treatment effects on budgeting

and saving behavior being much larger than effects on outcomes concerning debt behavior

(Kaiser et al. 2022, p. 265). They also vary by treatment intensity, delivery format, and age of

the participants (Kaiser et al. 2022, p. 267): effect sizes increase with time spent in the

classroom (see also Kaiser and Menkhoff 2020) and are much smaller with light-touch

interventions, such as mere information provision (e.g., Choi et al. 2010; Goda et al. 2014). In

contrast to the findings in the earlier literature about the effectiveness of classroom-based

programs, the most recent evidence shows that these programs are generally effective.

Treatment effects on financial literacy appear larger at younger ages, whereas treatment effects

on behaviors are larger among adults.

Fourth, interventions studied in RCTs generally have low costs and thus have a very

favorable cost-to-effectiveness ratio. The average intervention costs about $60 (median of

16
about $20) (2019 PPP) per participant for one-fifth of a standard deviation improvement in

outcomes. This places financial education interventions favorably within the field of education

interventions (Kraft 2020).

Meta-regression analysis. Based on the results derived from the new meta-analysis, we

now turn to a re-analysis of the most recent meta dataset of financial education treatment effects

estimated in RCTs. We use the data from Kaiser et al. (2020) and consider potential drivers of

heterogeneity in treatment effects across sites in a meta-regression model, allowing for joint

consideration of these study-level covariates (see Kaiser et al. 2020 for a formal introduction

of the general meta-analysis model). We restrict the sample to classroom financial education

interventions measuring changes in saving or debt behavior as an outcome. We only include

studies with complete information about the study-level characteristics, which results in a

reduced sample relative to the original meta-analysis (Kaiser et al. 2022). We regress the

standardized financial education treatment effect estimates on measures of debt and saving

behavior on study-level covariates (i.e., the intensity, the delay between treatment and

measurement of outcomes, features of the target group, and the type of behavior studied). We

allow for residual heterogeneity in true effects across sites by including a study-level random

effect (i.e., not assuming the covariates capture the full true heterogeneity in true effects) and

clustering the standard errors at the study level for inference. The weights used in the meta-

analysis are a combination of the inverse of the random sampling error associated with each

treatment effect estimate within each study and the heterogeneity in true effects between

studies, which is estimated from the data (see Kaiser et al. 2022).

< Table 4 about here >

As expected, we found that intensity is positively correlated with larger treatment effect

estimates at a rate of about +0.03 percent for each additional hour of classroom exposure, and

delay between treatment and measurement of outcomes in weeks is negatively correlated with

17
effect sizes, assuming a linear relationship results in a fadeout of about 0.06 percent of a

standard deviation per week (i.e., the average effect of interventions on saving behavior with

less than one hour of intensity fades out after about four years). Thus, increasing the intensity

can generate lasting effects on saving behavior, as seen in recent long-term evaluations of

treatment effects in Brazilian high schools (Bruhn et al. 2016, 2022). As in the original analysis,

we do not find evidence for smaller (or larger) effects based on respondent income but find

smaller effects for children relative to youth or adults, likely because behavior change is more

difficult to observe or measure at these early ages when children rarely interact with financial

markets on their own. As in the original analysis, the effects on borrowing behavior are much

more muted, with an average intervention effect of about 0.02 SD units relative to about 0.13

SD units for saving behavior (see also Kaiser et al. 2022 for an in-depth discussion of treatment

effect heterogeneity along several dimensions and beyond classroom interventions).

5 What works in financial education?

While the available meta-analyses suggest effective interventions, it is important to

understand the drivers behind the heterogeneity in treatment effects of financial education

programs across contexts. In the following section, we discuss areas where reliable evidence

of effective interventions exists. This discussion may inform policymakers interested in

implementing financial education programs in the context of national strategies as well as

practitioners interested in designing effective programs for new contexts or target groups.

a. Evidence on large-scale programs in schools

While there are numerous RCTs studying financial education interventions in schools

(see Kaiser and Menkhoff 2020 for a meta-analysis focusing on school-based programs), they

only measure short-term effects. However, there are now two large-scale RCTs studying long-

term outcomes: one in Brazil and one in Peru. Bruhn et al. (2016) studied the effect of a

18
financial education program in a large-scale experiment with over 25,000 students in more than

890 schools in Brazil. They found that the extensive program for 16-year-old students

improved financial literacy scores by a quarter of a standard deviation and had positive effects

on various aspects of saving behavior in the short term. They also found strong short-term

effects on students’ financial autonomy and self-reported money management behavior. At the

same time, however, the study also found, in the short term, adverse treatment effects on

borrowing behavior, as students appeared to increase their use of expensive forms of credit to

finance consumption expenditures. The authors recently conducted a long-term evaluation of

the same students, following 16,000 students for nine years after the treatment, relying on

administrative data to measure outcomes (Bruhn et al. 2022). This long-term follow-up

provides evidence of persistent effects. In contrast to the short-term results, treated students

were found to be less likely to engage in high-cost borrowing and there were fewer arrears.

They also found effects on the probability of owning a micro-enterprise. These findings

highlight the importance of looking at both the long-term and short-term effects of financial

education.

Frisancho (2023a) studies a similar program in Peru within a large-scale experiment.

She also finds immediate impacts on financial literacy scores (about 15 percent of a standard

deviation) and some impacts on financial autonomy (0.02 standard deviations) and “financial

savviness” (0.03 standard deviations). More importantly, three years after the program, she

finds no effects on credit behavior (loan taking) at the extensive margin, but large effects on

late payments at the intensive margin: treated students with loans see a reduction of arrears in

the order of magnitude of about 20 percent relative to the control group.

The evidence from these programs highlights that financial education can make an

important and lasting difference regarding student outcomes later in life. Since these programs

have limited costs (Frisancho, 2023a, reports about 5 USD per student), it seems warranted to

19
advocate for personal financial education requirements in high schools. These positive results

mirror the findings in the U.S. literature on mandates studied in natural experiments, indicating

that programs at scale have external validity across contexts and that natural experiments

appear to come close to the internal validity of RCTs in this literature.

In addition to the direct effects on students, both large-scale RCTs also study outcomes

on adults exposed to the children. Bruhn et al. (2016) finds positive spillovers to parents

whereas Frisancho (2023b) finds some evidence of spillovers on parent financial behavior

within households of lower socio-economic status. Frisancho (2023a) also finds large effects

on the financial literacy of teachers (about 0.3 standard deviations) and even savings at both

the extensive and intensive margin. All of this suggests that the welfare effects of school-based

financial education may be even larger, since spillover to peers is likely (see also Duflo and

Saez 2003; Haliassos et al. 2019).

b. Evidence on innovative programs for adults

While school-based financial education is a natural starting point for policy

intervention, experimental impact evaluations of adult financial education programs are much

more common in this literature, especially in developing economies (e.g., Bruhn et al. 2014).

Because the early experimental literature on the effects of classroom-based exposure to

financial literacy education of adults showed relatively muted impacts, a wave of RCTs

examined programs that evaluate alternatives to classroom-based settings (see also Zia 2023

for an excellent overview of the new wave of RCTs). The diverse approaches include tailoring

interventions to target groups (e.g., Doi et al., 2014; Seshan and Yang 2014; Abarcar et al.

2020; Barua et al. 2020); simplifying curricula by introducing “rules of thumb” (Drexler et al.

2014); introducing personalized elements like counseling (Carpena et al. 2017); using mass

media to communicate financial information and change attitudes (Berg and Zia 2017); relying

on experiential learning to debias participants (Abel et al. 2020); relying on digital delivery and

20
gamification (Attanasio et al. 2019; Sconti 2022); adapting the teaching pedagogy to include

active learning and group exercises as opposed to lecture-based formats (Kaiser and Menkhoff

2022); and relying on decentralized teaching responsibility (Hakizimfura et al. 2020). Many of

these programs produced larger effects than the previous wave of evidence, and we expect

more studies to follow. In summary, the evidence suggests that interventions should be

designed to be (a) relevant to the life situation of those targeted by the program, (b) accessible,

entertaining, and actively engaging, and (c) scalable with moderate marginal cost per

participant.

As many countries have implemented or are implementing national strategies for

financial literacy (Lusardi and Mitchell 2023), impact evaluations of financial education

campaigns operated at scale are especially important. Recently, we pre-registered an impact

evaluation of a national financial education campaign delivered via television, radio, print, and

social media in Italy in the AEA RCT registry (Kaiser et al. 2022). We employ a randomized

encouragement design to study the short-term and long-term effects of the campaign on

financial attitudes, awareness, and behaviors. We also elicit predictions from experts about the

treatment effects of such a campaign and pre-registered heterogeneity analyses based on

baseline gender, baseline financial literacy, and socio-economic background. The large-scale

evaluation with representative household survey data is expected to inform evidence-based

policies regarding national campaigns with low marginal costs.

c. Evidence on causal mechanisms

While it is informative to know what works, it is even more important to understand

why interventions work. While there is now robust evidence that financial education, on

average, is successful in changing financial behavior, the causal mechanism translating

educational inputs into action is less well understood. The extant literature has discussed

potential causal mediators of the treatment effects (Sayinzoga et al. 2016; Carpena and Zia

21
2020; Horn et al. 2020; Kaiser and Menkhoff 2022), but no experiment has been designed to

identify mechanisms. An obvious candidate is a cognitive mechanism, i.e., improved financial

knowledge leads to potential correction of financial mistakes and/or to better financial

outcomes. Some studies provide evidence for such a mechanism (e.g., Sayinzoga et al. 2016),

but there remain unexplained direct effects of the treatment on outcomes. Horn et al. (2020)

show that lasting behavior changes among treated youth do not depend on persistent gains in

financial knowledge. Similarly, Kaiser and Menkhoff (2022) find that financial literacy scores

do not appear to mediate the observed treatment effects in a financial education intervention

directed at adults and which was found to impact behavior persistently, i.e., until four years

after the treatment. Changes in measures of self-control have a good deal of explanatory power,

but a large share of treatment effects appear to be unexplained by the considered mediators.

Recently, Carpena and Zia (2020) employed more formal mediation analysis methods to study

the importance of different mechanisms. While such an exercise comes with strong

assumptions and should be interpreted with caution, they provide evidence that suggests that

the treatment effects are not mediated by increased financial numeracy (i.e., a cognitive

mechanism) but instead by changes in financial awareness and especially attitudes. More

research is clearly needed to better understand what drives behavior change.

6 Outlook and research priorities in financial literacy and financial education

The academic research of the past fifteen years has generated an abundance of empirical

evidence on financial literacy and financial education that can inform evidence-based policy

and inspire future work. Despite this remarkable advance in research and what can be learned

from the research, we see three broad areas where more work is needed.

i. Financial literacy and causal mechanisms from financial education to behavior

22
 Why do we observe a gender gap in financial literacy at early ages? What is the role of

the social environment in shaping financial literacy and behaviors? How does intergenerational

transmission of financial literacy work? How does heterogeneity in financial literacy contribute

to persistent inequality across generations? These questions are related to the generation and

growth of financial literacy in different societies (e.g., Grohmann et al. 2015). While selected

studies in the extant literature try to address these questions, there is substantial room for

additional empirical inquiry and theoretical modeling in this area. More work on the

measurement of financial literacy and related constructs is also welcome. While the “Big

Three” serve as a reliable and concise measure of basic financial knowledge, measurement

instruments that capture a broader range of knowledge, such as the TIAA-Institute-GFLEC

Personal Finance Index, are needed (Yakoboski, Hasler, and Lusardi, 2023).

Related to measurement and the latent construct of financial literacy’s psychometric

structure is the question of how financial literacy relates to the nascent literature on

heterogeneity in individuals’ mental models of different aspects of financial markets and how

financial literacy may interact with belief and expectation formation (e.g., Andre et al. 2022,

2023; Heiss et al. 2022).

The link between financial literacy and economic preferences is also an area of active

debate, but empirical work has shown some regularities worth noting. First, financial literacy

and time preferences (i.e., individual-level discount factors) appear positively correlated in

many empirical inquiries. On average, individuals with more patience appear to be more

financially literate (Bianchi 2018; Oberrauch and Kaiser 2022). One mechanism may be that

patient individuals are more likely to acquire financial information, for example, by

participating in voluntary financial education programs (Meier and Sprenger 2013). In general,

the field lacks psychometric studies that consider the relationship among financial literacy,

preferences, and other variables related to human capital and financial decision-making.

23
 Cognitive biases can also be important. Stango and Zinman (2023) and Chapman et al.

(2023) have recently studied the dimensionality of behavioral biases and derived a taxonomy

of consumer financial decision-making. They found that financial literacy is negatively

correlated with many of the considered biases. We envision work that extends this observation

and studies whether financial education can help to mitigate biases, i.e., whether education

interventions may help with debiasing individuals.

Regarding the mechanisms underlying behavior change in response to financial

education interventions, several evaluations of financial education programs have been found

to have causal effects on time preferences (i.e., patience and time-inconsistency) and the quality

of intertemporal decision-making (i.e., choice consistency), especially on the young (Alan and

Ertac 2018; Bover et al. 2018; Lührmann et al. 2018; Sutter et al. 2020; Kaiser et al. 2023b).

Thus, changes in time preferences and self-control caused by educational interventions could

play an important role in explaining, for example, the treatment effects on saving behavior

observed in the literature (Kaiser et al. 2022). Supporting this hypothesis, in a program with

adults in Uganda, Kaiser et al. (2023b) found evidence for causal effects on patience in

incentivized tasks. These effects are heterogeneous by age, with large effects for youth and

zero effects for adults. Interestingly, these effects also carry over to saving behavior.

While the identification of causal effects on preference parameters is an intricate issue

(see Lührmann et al. 2018 for a discussion of concerns that financial education treatments cause

respondents to engage in intertemporal arbitrage, violating identifying assumptions of utility

parameters), the literature on the malleability of preferences provides promising results on the

study of mechanisms behind financial behavior change.

ii. Long-term effects of financial education and overcoming the limitations of

survey data in impact evaluations
While there is currently high-quality evidence from RCTs that considers relatively long-term

outcomes and relies on administrative data (Bruhn et al. 2016, 2022; Frisancho 2023a), we

24
envision a wave of new evidence emerging from behavior change studies that rely on

transaction data and other forms of administrative data. In the extant literature, concerns that

survey response behaviors drive elements of the treatment effects on behaviors are warranted.

However, results from the limited set of studies relying on administrative data paint a picture

similar to that of studies based on household surveys (Attanasio et al. 2019; Bruhn et al. 2022;

Frisancho 2023a). We expect more evidence in this direction, especially for advanced and

emerging economies where the importance of digital finance is increasing.

iii. The effect of financial education beyond directional changes in financial

behavior
Finally, it seems important to focus less on directional changes in financial behavior

(which are often assumed to improve well-being) and more on welfare assessments and the

quality of decision-making; after all, the individual’s objective is not just to save more or

borrow less, but to increase their well-being. De Beckker et al. (2023) study changes in

students’ decision-making in hypothetical choice experiments and find that financial education

does not automatically improve choices. Ambuehl et al. (2022) have developed a method to

evaluate the success of financial education interventions by considering choice errors in framed

decision situations. Similarly, Boyer et al. (2022) have evaluated welfare loss in hypothetical

choice experiments. This approach has the appeal of not depending on normative assumptions

about the optimality of consumer behavior change (for the average consumer) in a certain

direction. Similarly, theoretical work by Lusardi et al. (2017, 2020) suggests that it may

sometimes be optimal for consumers to do nothing. This highlights the need for approaches

that evaluate treatment effects on heterogeneous consumers within a theoretical framework. So

far, theoretical work and empirical impact evaluations have not been well connected.

Likewise, there is no evidence about likely general equilibrium effects of financial

literacy expansion. Kosfeld and Schuewer (2017) consider financial markets with shrouded

add-on pricing and argue that financial education may not achieve an unshrouded equilibrium

25
but will shift markets to an equilibrium in which financial institutions discriminate between

consumer types. In this instance, consumers who remained financially illiterate would pay

higher prices. It is possible that the welfare effects of education can be ambiguous or negative

(resulting from the negative externality on naïve consumers). While this is an intriguing

theoretical argument, there is no empirical work considering the equilibrium effects of financial

education provision. Few studies investigate the issue of spillover to untreated peers (Hamdan

et al. 2021), and much remains to be learned about the impact of financial education on supply-

side decisions.

Empirical evidence on likely general equilibrium effects is especially important in

anticipating how the financial industry will react to greater sophistication among its clients. If

financial education reaches enough naïve clients, an unshrouded equilibrium with lower prices

may be achieved in the long run. However, if a relatively large share of clients remains naïve,

there could be higher prices for those with low literacy. Currently, few studies investigate

financial education provided by the banking sector. One exception is Fort et al. (2016), who

studied the effect of bank information policies in Italy on financial knowledge. They find that

the policies are effective for about five to ten percent of the population, particularly among

those who are elderly and have low levels of education.

Lastly, an interesting avenue of research is the effect of financial education on mental

models of the economy and economic policy preferences. Stantcheva’s 2021 work has shown

remarkable heterogeneity in laypersons' understanding of economic policy. An important area

of research would be to study the relationship between financial literacy and the understanding

of economic policy as well as normative attitudes, as summarized in Fornero and Lo Prete

(2023). Additionally, the exploration of whether financial education interventions affect policy,

especially monetary policy, seems worthwhile.

26
 Recently, a global network of financial literacy and personal finance researchers (the

G53 Network) and a field journal dedicated to this topic (Journal of Financial Literacy and

Wellbeing) have been formed. One role of the network and the journal is to empower emerging

researchers to work on open questions and advance knowledge about what works in financial

literacy and financial education, and why. We hope that this paper will provide interested

readers with a concise overview of the existing empirical work and will inspire future work

that advances knowledge about financial literacy and financial education and their effects.

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Table 1: Sample descriptive statistics of the 2021 NFCS

Variable N Mean SD Min Max

Individual characteristics
Female (1/0) 27,118 0.54 0 1
Non-white ethnicity (1/0) 27,118 0.26 0 1
No college (1/0) 27,118 0.536 0 1
Couple (1/0) 27,118 0.09 0 1
Married (1/0) 27,118 0.49 0 1
Unemployed (1/0) 27,118 0.081 0 1
Self-employed (1/0) 27,118 0.079 0 1
Retired (1/0) 27,118 0.216 0 1
College edu parents (1/0) 26,637 0.428 0 1
Risk seeking 26,458 5.054 2.71 1 10
Fin., edcuation in school 24,563 0.136 0 1

Age groups
18-24 27,118 0.111 0 1
25-34 27,118 0.173 0 1
35-44 27,118 0.168 0 1
45-54 27,118 0.170 0 1
55-64 27,118 0.174 0 1
65+ 27,118 0.203 0 1

Income levels
< $15,000 27,118 0.123 0 1
≥ $15,000 & < $25,000 27,118 0.108 0 1
≥ $25,000 & < $35,000 27,118 0.108 0 1
≥ $35,000 & < $50,000 27,118 0.142 0 1
≥ $50,000 & < $75,000 27,118 0.185 0 1
≥ $75,000 & < $100,000 27,118 0.132 0 1
≥ $100,000 & < $150,000 27,118 0.128 0 1
≥ $150,000 & < $200,000 27,118 0.045 0 1
≥ $200,000 & < $300,000 27,118 0.021 0 1
≥ $300,000 27,118 0.010 0 1

Notes: Data from the 2021 wave of the National Financial Capability Study (NFCS) across all 50 U.S. states, and Washington D.C, with about 500
respondents per state, on average. California and Oregon were oversampled with 1,250 respondents in each state. All analyses include survey weights
to be representative of Census distributions for the variables age, gender, ethnicity, education, and state, based on data from the American Community
Survey (with adjustments to oversampling of the two states) (see www.FINRAFoundation.org/NFCS).

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Figure 1: Demographic correlates of financial literacy

Notes: The dependent variable is financial literacy (measured with the “Big Three”) standardized to have a mean of zero and an SD of 1 in the full
sample. This figure shows unstandardized OLS regression coefficients with 90% and 95% CIs at an estimated intercept of -0.349. Number of
observations is N=26,007. Adjusted R2 is 0.22. Base cohort in age is the group of 18-24-year-old respondents. Coefficient estimates in category
“Income” are relative to the group with less than $15,000 annual income. All variables are defined in Table 1.

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Table 2: The effect of financial literacy on financial behaviors

OLS IV

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

Retirement Financial Credit Too much 1st Retirement Financial Credit Too much
planning fragility record debt stage planning fragility record debt

Fin. Literacy 0.045*** -0.038*** 0.084*** -0.086*** 0.642*** -0.362*** 0.643*** -0.196*
(Big 3) [0.004] [0.004] [0.008] [0.008] [0.100] [0.065] [0.128] [0.116]
0.156***
Fin. education
[0.022]
Mean (SD) of 0.000 0.000 0.000
0.42 0.30
Dep. Var. (1.000) (1.000) (1.000)

Controls P P P P P P P P

N 19,209 25,251 24,679 25,737 24,563 18,240 23,880 23,334 24,338

Adj.R2 0.167 0.239 0.290 0.108

Notes: Dependent variables are whether the respondent has ever tried to find out how much she needs to save for retirement (columns 1 and 6), a
dummy indicatingwhether the respondent “probably” or “certainly” could not come up with $2,000 if an unexpected need arose within the next
month (columns 2 and 7), how the respondent rated her credit record on a scale from 1 (very bad) to 5 (very good) (columns 3 and 8), and whether
the respondent agrees with the statement “I have too much debt right now” on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) (columns 4
and 9). The dependent variables “Credit record” and “Too much debt” are standardized to have mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1. Regressions
with the binary dependent variables “Retirement planning” and “Financial fragility” are based on linear probability models.Columns 6-9 show
instrumental variable estimations where the financial literacy score based on the “Big 3” questions is instrumented by a dummy indicating whether
the respondent received financial education in school. The first stage F-Statistic (column 5) is 49.572. Standard errors in brackets. ***p<0.01,
**p<0.05, *p<0.1.

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 Table 3: Heterogenous effects of financial literacy on behaviors

(a) Female (b) No college education (c) Non-white ethnicity

(1)
(2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12)
Retireme
Financial Credit Too much Retirement Financial Credit Too much Retirement Financial Credit Too much
nt
fragility record debt planning fragility record debt planning fragility record debt
planning

Panel A: Ordinary Least Squares (OLS)

Fin. Literacy 0.052*** -0.044*** 0.081*** -0.046*** 0.051*** -0.033*** 0.061*** -0.037*** 0.037*** -0.038*** 0.092*** -0.078***
(Big 3) [0.006] [0.005] [0.01] [0.011] [0.006] [0.005] [0.01] [0.011] [0.008] [0.007] [0.015] [0.015]

0.117*** 0.711*** -0.47*** 0.109** 0.045** 0.726*** -0.328*** -0.143*** 0.205*** 0.597*** -0.234*** -0.116
Intercept
[0.026] [0.024] [0.048] [0.05] [0.02] [0.021] [0.041] [0.043] [0.036] [0.034] [0.07] [0.072]
Controls P P P P P P P P P P P P

N 10,155 13,482 13,165 13,795 10,262 13,141 12,678 13,497 5,458 64,68 6,292 6,643
2
Adj. R 0.157 0.237 0.295 0.108 0.114 0.204 0.256 0.081 0.119 0.183 0.23 0.071

Panel B: Instrumental variable estimation (IV)

Fin. Literacy. 0.449*** -0.273*** 0.477*** -0.316** 0.418*** -0.356*** 0.669*** -0.340*** 0.592*** -0.487*** 0.876*** -0.629***
(Big 3) [0.08] [0.063] [0.121] [0.127] [0.074] [0.07] [0.127] [0.116] [0.166] [0.148] [0.293] [0.24]

0.414*** 0.379*** -0.281*** 0.3*** 0.309*** 0.427*** -0.347*** 0.148*** 0.457*** 0.224*** 0.069 0.076
Intercept
[0.024] [0.023] [0.047] [0.047] [0.02] [0.022] [0.043] [0.038] [0.037] [0.026] [0.051] [0.046]
Controls P P P P P P P P P P P P

N 9,629 12,745 12,451 13,052 9,861 12,586 12,140 12,930 5,235 6,174 5,994 6,345

Notes: Panel A shows results from OLS regressions. Dependent variables are whether the respondent has ever tried to figure out how much she needs to save for retirement , a dummy on whether the respondent “probably” or
“certainly” could not come up with $2,000 if an unexpected need arose within the next month, how the respondent would rate her credit record on a scale from 1 (very bad) to 5 (very good), and whether the respondent agrees with
the statement “I have too much debt right now” on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) (columns 4 and 9). Dependent variables “Credit record” and “Too much debt” are z-standardized to have mean of 0 and
standard deviation of 1 in the pooled sample. Regressions with the binary dependent variable “Retirement planning” and “Financial fragility” are based on a linear probability model (LPM). Panel B shows instrumental variable
estimations where the financial literacy score based on the “Big 3” questions is instrumented by a dummy on whether the respondent received financial education in school, 0 otherwise. Standard errors in brackets. ***p<0.01,
**p<0.05, *p<0.1.

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 Table 4: Meta-regression analysis of classroom financial education treatment effects

(1)
Std. treatment effect on financial behavior
Classroom intervention characteristics
0.0003*
Intensity of intervention (h)
[0.0001]
-0.0006***
Delay (weeks)
[0.0002]
Target group characteristics
0.017
Low-income student (=1)
[0.0371]
-0.078*
Children (=1)
[0.041]
Outcome type
-0.110***
Borrowing behavior (base category: saving behavior)
[0.006]
0.126***
Intercept (meta-estimate)
[0.319]
No. of treatment effect estimates 253

No. of studies 41

Notes: Meta-regression based on data and method described in Kaiser et al. (2022). Standard errors in brackets. ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1.

40

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