Gender gaps in financial literacy: a multi-arm RCT to break the response bias in surveys

Laura Hospido, Nagore Iriberri and Margarita Machelett

No 18646, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Women are consistently more likely to respond “I do not know†(IDK) to financial questions, a pattern that might not solely reflect knowledge gaps. We test whether this behavior can be shifted and how it shapes measured financial literacy, using a randomized experiment with 6,000 adults in Spain. We evaluate three interventions: removing the IDK option, offering monetary incentives, and providing an informational nudge. All three reduce IDK responses significantly, suggesting that IDK use is not purely knowledge-driven. In particular, the informational nudge reduces the gender gap in IDK responses by half, and eliminates it in specifications with controls. Turning to financial literacy, we find suggestive evidence that incentives, if anything, would increase the gender gap, while the informational nudge type of interventions would go in the direction of reducing the gender gap in financial literacy.

Keywords: Financial; literacy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C8 C9 D14 D91 G53 I22 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-12
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Working Paper: Gender gaps in financial literacy: a multi-arm RCT to break the response bias in surveys (2024)
Working Paper: Gender Gaps in Financial Literacy: A Multi-Arm RCT to Break the Response Bias in Surveys (2023)
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