Education and saving:

“…when states began mandating the inclusion of personal finance, economics, and other consumer education topics in the K-12 educational curriculum (Bernheim et al. 2001).2 Private financial and 2By 2011, economic education had been incorporated into the K-12 educational standards of every state…”

“The most optimistic results for how education can improve saving are found by Bernheim and Garrett (2003) and Bernheim, Garrett, and Maki (2001). They use cross-sectional surveys of individuals from the population, rather than the employees in a specific company.”

“1750008-21 (mostly due to political rationales rather than to stimulate retirement planning; see Bernheim et al., 2001).17 Since the ALP reports the state in which respondents were born, we use it as a proxy for state residence at age 17 so we can infer whether the state in which the respondent…”

“…(2012) finds that although an extra year of schooling leads to a 7-8 percentage point increase in the likelihood of financial participation, this is due to enhanced cognitive ability rather than any specific financial literacy education as previously inferred by Bernheim, Garrett, and Maki (2001).”

“…evaluates the association of financial education and testbased financial literacy (e.g., Mandell 2008; Walstad et al. 2010; Heinberg et al. 2010; Lührmann et al. 2015) as well as financial behavior (e.g., Bernheim et al. 2001; Servon and Kaestner 2008; Clark et al. 2015; Lührmann et al. 2015).”

“Moreover, Bernheim et al. (2001) found that people who, as children, have been encouraged to save using a bank account, save more than others in their adult life.”

“Bernheim et al. (2001) found positive effects of state mandates on savings rates and net worth in subsequent adulthood years.”

“Non-experimental studies that identify the effects of state-mandated or optional personal finance programs in high school on later behavior as an adult have found mixed evidence (Bernheim et al., 2001; Cole et al., 2015; Peng et al., 2007).”

“Indeed, Bernheim et al. (2001) use variation in the introduction of consumer education across states in the U.S. to show that these programs had a positive effect on asset accumulation later in life.”

“Bernheim, Garrett, and Maki (2001) study mandatory high school financial education requirements, finding that increased exposure to financial curricula raises subsequent asset accumulation.”

“Bernheim, Garrett, and Maki (2001) pioneered the use of state-level variation in high school financial curriculum mandates, and reported some evidence in survey data that financial education increases asset accumulation.”

“…economic, and personal characteristics of resource-constrained people, such as their living conditions (Hill 2001; Ludwig, Duncan, and Hirschfield 2001; Rosa et al. 2012), health (Johnson, Mermin, and Murphy 2007), education (Bernheim, Garrett, and Maki 2001), and social capital (Cleaver 2005).”

“Bernheim & Garrett (2003) show that financial education in the workplace significantly increases the probability of savings in general, whereas Bernheim et al. (2001) report that households who were exposed to financial curricula during high school have higher savings rates than others.”

“For example, Bernheim et al. (2001) employ a difference-in-difference approach to analyze the impact of state high school financial education mandates on savings behavior in the U.S. and find that mandates appear to effectively increase exposure to financial education, and have a significant…”

“Some studies have focused on nation-wide programs, using the timing of implementation at the state level to identify impacts (Bernheim et al., 2001; Cole et al., 2012).”

“Given the pressing need to improve financial literacy among individuals, financial education programs have become an important topic of research (Bernheim et al., 2001; Bernheim and Garrett, 2003; Lusardi and Mitchell 2007b, 2014; Atkinson, 2008).”

“To date, three main avenues of research have been proposed to address this scarcity: (1) directly improving education (e.g., Bernheim, Garrett, and Maki 2001); (2) improving access to timely decision support (Lynch 2009); or (3) implementing judicious default options to limit the harm that people…”

“Moreover, Bernheim et al. (2001), Cole and Shastry (2009), and Lusardi and Mitchell (2009) investigate how changes in US schooling laws and state mandates requiring schools to offer financial literacy relate to financial market participation.”

“Problems that surfaced during the 2007-2009 financial crisis also include foreclosures (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2014) and low savings rates (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2014; Bernheim et al., 2001; Vitt et al., 2005) which caused”

“…familial and economic conditions and financial knowledge, contribute to the likelihood of saving and having financial assets (Babiarz and Robb 2013; Bernheim et al. 2001; Beverly et al. 2008; Caskey 1997; Hilgert et al. 2003; Hogarth and Anguelov 2003; Klawitter et al. 2013; Painter and Vespa…”

“Although extensive financial education may lead people to save more (Bernheim, Garrett, and Maki 2001; Lusardi and Mitchell 2007), Experiment 2 showed that understanding compound interest had no effect on behavior.”

“…findings from an ex post survey show that adults who participated in a financial education course at a young age have slightly higher saving rates (Bernheim et al., 2001), while a pseudo-randomized, natural field experiment documents that 13- to 19-year-old students exhibit higher saving rates…”

“Bernheim, Garrett, and Maki (2001) suggest that education plays an important role.”

“…debt and student loans (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2014; Council for Economic Education (CEE), 2016), having low saving rates, (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2014; Bernheim, Garrett, and Maki, 2001), and engaging in poor credit card behaviors that can have lasting negative effects (Borden et al., 2008).”

“One approach to improving the quality of these financial decisions is to invest in educational programs that target financial literacy (see, for example, Bernheim, Garrett, and Maki (2001)).”

“…been through financial education.1 Financial education programmes have been provided in many settings, such as inclusion in high school curricula (Bernheim et al. 2001; Sherraden et al. 2007; Mandell 2008), workplace education programmes (Bernheim and Garrett 2003), education efforts by banks…”

“Financial knowledge affects teenagers’ ability to become financially secure adults (Martin and Oliva 2001), their exposure to financial crises (Klapper et al. 2013), their preparedness for retirement (Alessie et al. 2011), and their saving behavior (Bernheim et al. 2001).”

“5 See, among others, Bernheim et al. (2001), Bernheim and Garrett (2003), Bertrand and Morse (2011), Cole et al. (2012), Duflo and Saez (2003), Lusardi (2004), Lusardi and Mitchell (2007a, 2007b), Lusardi and Tufano (2009), Stango and Zinman (2009), and van Rooij et al. (2007).”

“In line with these findings, Bernheim et al. (2001) found that adult participants, who remembered their parents being “frugal” (in the sense that they saved more than average) during their teenage years, saved more themselves than others.”

“Bernheim et al. (2001), in a study for the United States, find that financial education at high school increases the rate at which individuals save and accumulate wealth during their adult lives.”

“For example, in the field of wealth management, Bernheim et al. (2001) and Bernheim and Garrett (2003) maintain that high school students with financial curriculum mandates and employers with financial education in the workplace enjoy higher savings.”

“Although some previous studies could not determine the exact cause and effect relationship between financial literacy and investment and savings behavior, many analysts believe that financial literacy is the key (Bernheim, Garrett, and Maki 2001; Turner, Bailey, and Scott 1994).”

“The seminal work of Bernheim et al. (2001) found that middle age individuals who took a personal finance course in high school tended to save a higher proportion of their income than others who did not.”

“However the subsequent causal link between financial literacy through an understanding of financial concepts and financial behaviour has not been reliably established (Bernheim et al. 2001; Gross et al. 2005; Benartzi and Thaler, 2007).”

“For instance, Bernheim, Garrett, and Maki (2001) find that financial education in high schools in the United States positively affects savings.”

“With regard to this issue, almost all the studies evaluating the effectiveness of such programs, most of which refer to the United States of America (Bernheim, Garrett, and Maki 2001; Tennyson and Nguyen 2001), reveal that they have a positive impact on students’ financial knowledge (Swinton et al.…”

“…has used alternative instruments for current financial literacy, including parental background (van Rooij et al., 2011), mathematical ability (Jappelli and Padula, 2013) when young, and previous experience of education in economics and finance (Bernheim et al., 2001; Lusardi and Tufano, 2009).”

“In this literature financial knowledge is regarded as a form of human capital, i.e. as another input in the economic process. pioneer study analyzing the relationship between training in financial areas and the level of savings was conducted by Bernheim et al. (2001).”