Non-experimental impact estimates of school financial education exposure on financial literacy outcomes
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6422265 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Manuel Salas Velasco (0000-0003-0618-5619, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 379-403 |
| Publication date | 2025-07-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Economia Politica (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1973-820X • E-ISSN: 1120-2890 |
| Publisher | Springer Science+Business Media (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s40888-025-00368-z |
| OpenAlex | W4412040104 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 63 |
Non-experimental research is increasingly used in economics to evaluate the impact of interventions on outcomes. This article contributes to the literature on non-experimental impact evaluation by estimating the causal effect of school-based financial education on financial competence outcomes using observational data from Italy. In the PISA 2012 assessment for financial literacy, Italy scored 466 points, reflecting the performance of 15-year-old students in understanding and applying financial concepts. Italian students performed below average compared to their peers in other OECD countries, where the average score was 500 points. Nonetheless, we find performance differences between cohorts exposed to financial education in a mandated high school curriculum and those who were not. Specifically, the exposure effect estimate resulted in an Average Treatment Effect on the Treated (ATT) of 25.68 score points using Nearest Neighbor Propensity Score Matching. We estimated an average financial literacy score of 479 points for Italian students exposed to school financial education. As a sensitivity analysis to verify the robustness of our treatment effect estimates, we applied two alternative propensity score-based methods and one exact matching method. The analysis identified a significant difference of at least 20 points in financial literacy scores between students exposed to school-based financial education and those who were not. Our non-experimental evidence is crucial in the ongoing heated and controversial debate on including economics and finance subjects as compulsory components in the secondary school curriculum. The results presented in this article can help education policymakers and educators develop evidence-based policies for school-based financial education
Business · Economics · Financial literacy · Financial system · Financial Literacy, Pension, Retirement Analysis · Housing Market and Economics · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare · Finance
The Knowledge and Skills That Are Essential to Make Financial Decisions
Assessing Sensitivity to an Unobserved Binary Covariate in an Observational Study with Binary Outcome
Education and saving
Can You Help Someone Become Financially Capable? A Meta-Analysis of the Literature
Does matching overcome LaLonde's critique of nonexperimental estimators?
The Economic Importance of Financial Literacy
Average causal effects from nonrandomized studies
The Estimation of Causal Effects by Difference-in-Difference Methods
Financial literacy and the need for financial education
Multivariate Matching Methods That Are Monotonic Imbalance Bounding
Generalizing Observational Study Results
Using Maimonides' Rule to Estimate the Effect of Class Size on Scholastic Achievement
Constructing Inverse Probability Weights for Marginal Structural Models
On Judging the Significance of Differences by Examining the Overlap Between Confidence Intervals
Cem
Moving towards best practice when using inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) using the propensity score to estimate causal treatment effects in observational studies
The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects
A Practitioner’s Guide to Cluster-Robust Inference
Matching As An Econometric Evaluation Estimator
Constructing a Control Group Using Multivariate Matched Sampling Methods That Incorporate the Propensity Score
Quasi-experimental designs for causal inference
The effects of high school personal financial education policies on financial behavior
The effect of financial education on pupils’ financial knowledge and skills
Caste and Credit
A review of financial-literacy education programs for children and adolescents
Factors that influence the level of financial literacy among young people
Is School-Based Financial Education Effective? Immediate and Long-Lasting Impacts on High School Students
Inference by Eye
Why Propensity Scores Should Not Be Used for Matching
Understanding and misunderstanding randomized controlled trials
The Concept of External Validity
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |