Financial Education

So much of my work in the last 10 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. (I'm behind the a!)

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: 4/2020.

  • UPDATED 4/2022!: Local High School Data: Personal Finance Course Requirements and Offerings Across America (2018-2022) 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!

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

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.

Code to write state-mandated financial education graduation requirements into the National Financial Capability Study

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

Podcasts

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

Research papers on financial education (these also appear on my research page, with additional ungated working paper versions)

  • Do High Schools Choose Financial Education Policies Based On Their Neighbors? (with Allison Luedtke) IZA Discussion Paper No. 14288

  • How Confident are Potential Personal Finance Teachers? (with Melody Harvey), link

  • Financial Education Affects Financial Knowledge and Downstream Behaviors (with Tim Kaiser, Annamaria Lusardi, and Lukas Menkhoff) DIW Discussion Paper No. 1864; NBER Working Paper No. 27507; CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP14741; IZA Discussion Paper No. 13178

  • Does State-mandated Financial Education Affect Financial Well-being? (with Jeremy Burke and J. Michael Collins), link

  • Financial Education in High Schools Across America, link

  • The Effects of Financial Education Graduation Requirements on Postsecondary Financing Decisions (with Christiana Stoddard), Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 2020, 52(4): 747-776. link

  • The Effects of High School Personal Finance Education Policies on Financial Behaviors (with Maximilian Schmeiser, J. Michael Collins, and Alexandra Brown) Forthcoming at Economics of Education Review, 2018. link

  • Workplace Financial Education and Retirement Behavior (with J. Michael Collins) Economic Inquiry 2016, 54(4): 1860-1872. link