Financial Literacy and Investments in Higher Education

Fernando López ()
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Fernando López: Universidad Alberto Hurtado

ILADES-UAH Working Papers from Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business

Abstract: Using a rich data set from a large U.S. non-profit organization, I find that low income post-secondary students are poorly informed about three main financial aspects of their higher education: future income, financing costs and opportunity cost of being enrolled. This result holds for students who are academically talented, have been exposed to financial education (including a semester-long personal finance class) and relevant financial experiences. Furthermore, the first round of results of a randomized controlled trial (N=117) suggests that an hour-long financial education workshop on the main financial aspects of college increases students’ GPA by 0.2 points (p-value=0.15) and their ability to receive financial aid from the non-profit organization by 11.4 percentage points (p-value=0.25).

Keywords: Financial Literacy; Financial Education; Financial Aid; Human Capital; Randomized Controlled Trial (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D14 G11 J24 R20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2014-09
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ila:ilades:inv300

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