Five steps to planning success: experimental evidence from US households

Abstract

While financial knowledge has been linked to improved financial behaviour, there is little consensus on the value of financial education, in part because rigorous evaluation of various programmes has yielded mixed results. However, given the heterogeneity of financial education programmes in the literature, focusing on 'generic' financial education can be inappropriate and even misleading. Lusardi (2009) and others argue that pedagogy and delivery matter significantly. In this paper, we design and field a low-…