The effects of financial education on financial literacy and savings behavior: Evidence from a controlled field experiment in Dutch primary schools

Adriaan Kalwij, Rob Alessie, M. Dinkova, Gea Schonewille, Anna van der Schors and Minou van der Werf

No 17-05, Working Papers from Utrecht School of Economics

Abstract: In this paper, we report the results of a controlled field experiment designed to estimate the short-term effects of a 45-minute financial education program on financial literacy and savings behavior in Dutch primary schools. Among fifth and sixth graders, the program led to a pre- to posttest improvement in financial literacy on almost one out of eight questions, with about one-third of the increase in correctness attributable to the program. It also raised the savings probability for fifth graders by seven percentage point but generated no significant increase for sixth graders. Overall, the program appears to have been mainly effective for the questions explicitly addressed in its content. We also note that the significant program effects appear to be driven by the result for girls; however, we cannot reject homogeneous treatment effects with respect to gender.

Keywords: Education; treatment effects; panel data models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur and nep-exp
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https://dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/348631/1705.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Effects of Financial Education on Financial Literacy and Savings Behavior: Evidence from a Controlled Field Experiment in Dutch Primary Schools (2019)
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