Publication: The Minimal Impact of a Large-Scale Financial Education Program in Mexico City
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Published
2014-03-12
ISSN
0304-3878
Date
2014-05-06
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Abstract
We conduct randomized experiments around a large-scale financial literacy course in Mexico City to understand the reasons for low take-up among a general population, and to measure the impact of this financial education course. Our results suggest that reputational, logistical, and specific forms of behavioral constraints are not the main reasons for limited participation, and that people do respond to higher benefits from attending in the form of monetary incentives. Attending training results in a 9 percentage point increase in financial knowledge, and a 9 percentage point increase in some self-reported measures of saving, but in no impact on borrowing behavior. Administrative data suggests that any savings impact may be short-lived. Our findings indicate that this course which has served over 300,000 people and has expanded throughout Latin America has minimal impact on marginal participants, and that people are likely making optimal choices not to attend this financial education course.
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Publication Why Is Voluntary Financial Education So Unpopular? Experimental Evidence from Mexico(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-05)Take-up of voluntary financial education programs is typically extremely low. This paper reports on randomized experiments around a large financial literacy course offered in Mexico City to understand the reasons for low take-up, and to measure the impact of financial education. It documents that the general public displays little interest in such courses and that participation is low even among individuals who express interest in financial education. The paper experimentally investigates barriers to take-up, and finds no impact of relaxing reputational or logistical constraints and no evidence that time inconsistency is the reason for limited participation. Even relatively sizeable monetary incentives get less than 40 percent of interested individuals invited to training to attend. Using a randomized encouragement design, the authors measure the impact of the course on financial knowledge and behavior. Attending training results in a 9 percentage point increase in financial knowledge and a 9 percentage point increase in saving outcomes, but no impact on borrowing behavior. Administrative data indicate that the savings impact is relatively short-lived. The results suggest people are making optimal choices not to attend financial education courses, and point to the limits of using general purpose courses to improve financial behavior for the general population.Publication Estimating Treatment Effects with Big Data When Take-up is Low(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-12-14)Low take-up of interventions is a common problem faced by evaluations of development programs. 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The findings show that a financial education workshop and personalized coaching result in a higher likelihood of paying credit cards on time, and of making more than the minimum payment, but do not reduce spending, resulting in higher profitability for the bank.Publication Learning the Impact of Financial Education When Take-Up is Low(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-12)This note shows how big data can help combine experimental with non-experimental approaches in impact evaluations when take-up is low. In this study, author have access to a large administrative data set (of 660 MB), which follows the monthly financial indicators of each client for up to 18 months prior to the intervention and 6 months after it. Moreover, from the experimental approach their also had a large pool of clients randomly assigned to the control group. This data enables us to obtain credible estimates by combining the experiment with two non-experimental approaches. Their first use propensity score matching to find, among the clients in the control group, a subset of clients that best mimics the pre-intervention financial trajectories of clients in the treatment group that received treatment. The effects of the workshops on the treated clients are summarized. Under our preferred specification, the author finds that participating in the workshop increases by 11 percentage points the likelihood of paying more than the minimum payment, and reduces by 3.4 percentage points the likelihood of delaying payment. Monthly credit card spending increases by 63.7 percent, and the likelihood of owning a deposit account with our partner bank also increases by 2.7 percentage points. The two financial education interventions help clients reach the minimum payment and pay their bills on time more often, without reducing their credit card spending. 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The purpose of this paper is to synthesize and distil the policy and implementation lessons emerging from these studies, use them to demonstrate the feasibility of impact evaluations in a broader array of topics, and thereby help prompt new impact evaluations for projects going forward.
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