The Impact of High School Financial Education on Financial Knowledge and Saving Choices

Abstract

We conducted a randomized controlled trial where 3,000 ninth-grade students in 77 high schools received a financial education course at different points of the year. Right after the treatment, treated students obtained 18 percent of one standard deviation higher scores in financial tests and showed more patience in hypothetical saving choices. In an incentivized saving task conducted three months after, treated students made more patient choices than a control group of tenth-graders. Within randomization strata, financial education shifted upward the distribution of low scores and patience in public schools, which overrepresent disadvantaged students, but not in nonpublic ones.