by Flavia Coda Moscarola and Matteo Migheli, 2015
Abstract
Financial and economic education is today a primary issue in academia and among policy makers and there is great interest towards programs able to boost it. In this paper we 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 is helpful in decreasing the children’s number of irrational responses. However, the program is effective in decreasing the impatience levels of males only. This deep gender difference casts some doubts about the gender neutrality of programmes of financial education.