The Effects of Education on Financial Outcomes: Evidence from Kenya

Kehinde Ajayi and Phillip Ross ()

Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2020, vol. 69, issue 1, 253 - 289

Abstract: We study the effects of education on the financial outcomes of young people using Kenya’s introduction of free primary education (FPE) in 2003 as an exogenous shock to schooling. Our identification strategy compares changes across cohorts and across regions with differing levels of pre-FPE enrollment. We find that FPE is associated with increases in educational attainment and increased use of formal financial services. We also find increases in financial capability, employment rates, and incomes. Our results are robust to controls for supply-side changes in financial access, providing new evidence that a large-scale government intervention can generate significant demand-driven improvements in financial outcomes.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/702996 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/702996 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
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:ucp:ecdecc:doi:10.1086/702996

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic Development and Cultural Change from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().