IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

Financial Education and Access to Savings Accounts: Complements or Substitutes? Evidence from Ugandan Youth Clubs

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Julian C. Jamison
  • Dean Karlan
  • Jonathan Zinman

Abstract

Evidence on the effectiveness of financial education and formal savings account access is lacking, particularly for youth. We randomly assign 250 youth clubs to receive either financial education, access to a cheap group account, or both. The financial education treatments increase financial literacy; the account-only treatment does not. Administrative data shows the education plus account treatment increases bank savings relative to account-only. But survey-measured total savings shows roughly equal increases across all treatment arms. Earned income also increases in all treatment arms. We find little evidence that education and account access are strong complements, and some evidence they are substitutes.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20135.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 20135.

as
in new window

Length:
Date of creation: May 2014
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20135
Note: DEV LE LS
Contact details of provider: Postal:
National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.

Phone: 617-868-3900
Web page: http://www.nber.org
Email:


More information through EDIRC

Keywords:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

  • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
  • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
  • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as
in new window


  1. Simone Schaner, 2016. "The Persistent Power of Behavioral Change: Long-Run Impacts of Temporary Savings Subsidies for the Poor," NBER Working Papers 22534, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Karlan, Dean & Ratan, Aishwarya Lakshmi & Zinman, Jonathan, 2013. "Savings by and for the Poor: A Research Review and Agenda," Working Papers 118, Yale University, Department of Economics.
  3. Pascaline Dupas & Jonathan Robinson, 2013. "Savings Constraints and Microenterprise Development: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Kenya," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 163-192, January.
  4. Nava Ashraf & Dean Karlan & Wesley Yin, 2006. "Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence From a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 121(2), pages 635-672.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.

as
in new window


Cited by:

  1. Antonia Grohmann & Theres Klühs & Lukas Menkhoff, 2017. "Does Financial Literacy Improve Financial Inclusion? Cross Country Evidence," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1682, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
  2. Calderone, Margherita & Fiala, Nathan & Mulaj, Florentina & Sadhu, Santadarshan & Sarr, Leopold, 2014. "When Can Financial Education Affect Savings Behavior? Evidence From A Randomized Experiment Among Low Income Clients of Branchless Banking in India," Working Papers 32, University of Connecticut, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Charles J. Zwick Center for Food and Resource Policy.
  3. Tim Kaiser & Lukas Menkhoff, 2016. "Does Financial Education Impact Financial Literacy and Financial Behavior, and if So, When?," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1562, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
  4. Cai, Jing & Song, Changcheng, 2017. "Do disaster experience and knowledge affect insurance take-up decisions?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 83-94.
  5. Jing Cai & Changcheng Song, 2016. "Do Disaster Experience and Knowledge Affect Insurance Take-up Decisions?," NBER Working Papers 22403, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20135. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ()

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.