Can a Mobile-App-Based Behavioral Intervention Teach Financial Skills to Youth? Experimental Evidence from a Financial Diaries Study

Veronica Frisancho, Alejandro Herrera and Silvia Prina ()
Additional contact information
Silvia Prina: Northeastern University

No 16304, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study the impact of a mobile-app-based behavioral intervention on youth's financial literacy and financial behavior. To maximize the chances to reach out-of-school youth, we provided access to a user-friendly budget recording tool coupled with biweekly enumerators' visits and SMSs during a 27-week period. The bundled treatment has positive and significant effects on financial literacy and awareness of market prices. The probability of saving and savings deposits are not affected, but usage of credit increases both at the extensive and intensive margins. Average treatment effects on financial literacy and behavior are driven by youth without previous exposure to financial education, suggesting that the bundled intervention prompted specific subgroups (i.e., youth with lower levels of financial knowledge) to invest more in financial literacy.

Keywords: financial literacy; financial diaries; financial inclusion; youth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D90 G41 G53 O12 O16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56 pages
Date: 2023-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-exp, nep-fle and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2023, 214, 595- 614

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp16304.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Can a mobile-app-based behavioral intervention teach financial skills to youth? Experimental evidence from a financial diaries study (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16304

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().