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Educating Children to Save: an Experimental Approach to Financial Education of Pupils in Primary Schools

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Financial education is today a primary issue. We experimentally test whether a programme (“treatment”) of financial education on savings, targeted to children aged 8 and 9, is effective and to what extent. We measure the interest rate required by the children before and after the treatment to accept to postpone a reward, compute its variation and compare this with that of a control group. We find that children are sensitive to the programme, and that this decreases the children’s impatience. We also find some gender differences that cast some doubts about the gender neutrality of programmes of financial education.

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  • Coda Moscarola, Flavia & Migheli, Matteo, 2015. "Educating Children to Save: an Experimental Approach to Financial Education of Pupils in Primary Schools," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201502, University of Turin.
    • Handle: RePEc:uto:dipeco:201502
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    1. ROSSI Cristina & SIERMINSKA Eva, 2015. "Single again? Saving patterns when widowhood occurs," LISER Working Paper Series 2015-04, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).

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