Financial Education

So much of my work in the last 12 years has looked at the causal effects of financial education, particularly in U.S schools. I have spent a lot of time turning my academic work into digestable findings for a wide audience. I have also created datasets of financial education policies at the state and local levels I would love for others to use! This page summarizes all of this work.

The image above is right before I presented to the federal Financial Literacy and Education Commission, chaired by the U.S. Dept. of Treasury.

Policy Briefs and White Papers

Datasets

State High School Graduation Requirement Data (1970-2024) link

This is an up-to-date spreadsheet of the grraduating cohorts required to complete some leve of personal finance instruction in high school prior to graduation, based on state policy. Please email me if you think you see an error! Also, check out Champlain College's Report Card for more on specific policies. Last update: 10/2024.

UPDATED 3/2024!: Local High School Data: Personal Finance Course Requirements and Offerings Across America (2018-2024) STATA, CSV

Ever wonder which high schools across the country require a personal finance course, require personal finance to be integrated into another subject, offer an elective in personal finance, or have no personal finance coursework whatsoever? Look no further! Above is a database of this precise information, based on what schools with online course catalogs have documented. If you see an error with your school, please e-mail me with your course catalog, and I will add it to the updates tab in the attached spreadsheet!

You can find a state % of students in schools with each policy here.

Data for the 2022-2023 AY at the course level are available here.

Code

Code to create state- and national-level financial well-being scores using the 2018 National Financial Capability Study. The code is intended to be used with the State-by-State Survey Respondent-Level Data. The data and data dictionairies can be found at www.usfinancialcapability.org

STATA Code

Code to create a "pseudo financial well-being" measure to mimic the financial well-being score from 2018 but spans 2012, 2015, and 2018 NFCS datasets is below. The file requires the user to downlaod the NFCS 2012 and 2015 datasets and convert them to STATA formats.

STATA Code

Files to replicate regressions in "The Effect of State-mandated Financial Education on Financial Well-being"

Replication Materials

Podcasts

Here are some podcasts I have been on discussing financial education work.