The Devil Is in the Details: State-Mandated Personal Finance Education and Financial Well-Being

J. Michael Collins () and Carly Urban ()
Additional contact information
J. Michael Collins: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Carly Urban: Montana State University

No 18268, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Research documents the positive effects of state-required financial education in high school on downstream financial outcomes but pools different types of mandates. Do state policies embedding personal finance content into another course have the same effect as those that require a standalone course? This paper considers the relative effects of the two policy levers on credit scores and subjective financial well-being, using data from states implementing these policies in similar years. Our results show that states requiring a full semester of coursework improve both credit scores and subjective measures of financial well-being, while states allowing more flexibility in implementing personal finance coursework into other classes do not.

Keywords: financial well-being; household finance; financial education; credit scores (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D14 D15 G53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fle
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp18268.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp18268

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 ().