Financial Education and Access to Savings Accounts: Complements or Substitutes? Evidence from Ugandan Youth Clubs
Written with Sami Horn (Carnegie Mellon University), Dean Karlan (Northwestern University), and Jonathan Zinman (Dartmouth University)

Abstract:
We randomly assign 240 youth clubs to receive either financial education, access to a subsidized group account, both, or neither. The financial education treatments increase financial literacy; the account-only treatment does not. Both administrative and survey data show that savings after one year increases in all treatment arms relative to the control group. Earned income also increases in the treatment arms, and all of these effects are successfully sustained in a second endline four years later. Despite fairly detailed data, we are unable to draw firm conclusions regarding mechanisms and heterogeneity. Overall we find little evidence that education and account access are strong complements, and some evidence that they are substitutes.
Date: 4 December 2019, 12:30 (Wednesday, 8th week, Michaelmas 2019)
Venue: Manor Road Building, Manor Road OX1 3UQ
Venue Details: Lecture Theatre
Speaker: Julian Jamison (University of Exeter)
Organising department: Department of Economics
Organisers: Emma Riley (Department of Economics, University of Oxford), Margaryta Klymak (Department of International Development), Rossa O'Keeffe-O'Donovan (Nuffield College)
Organiser contact email address: suzanne.george@economics.ox.ac.uk
Part of: CSAE Lunchtime Seminars
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Public
Editors: Suzanne George, Anna Siwek