Financial Education in Schools: A Meta-Analysis of Experimental Studies

Abstract

We study the literature on school financial education programs for children and youth via aquantitative meta-analysis of 37 (quasi-) experiments. We find that financial education treatmenthas, on average, a significant and sizeable impact on financial knowledge (+0.25 SD), similar toeducational interventions in other domains. Additionally, we document small but still significanteffects on financial behaviors (+0.05 SD). These results are robust to restricting the sample to 18randomized experiments and they hold irrespective of the meta-analytic method used. Meta-regressions show the beneficial effect of more intensive treatments and smaller class size, albeitwith decreasing marginal returns.