Journal of Consumer Affairs
Volume 50, Issue 2, 2016, Pages 263-285
Financial Education Interventions Targeting Immigrants and Children of Immigrants: Results from a Randomized Control Trial (Article)
Barcellos S.H. ,
Carvalho L.S. ,
Smith J.P. ,
Yoong J.
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a
University of Southern California, United States
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b
University of Southern California, United States
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c
RAND Corporation, United States
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d
National University of Singapore, Singapore
Abstract
We document that immigrants in the United States differ from natives in several aspects relevant for their financial decision making. Based on these differences, we designed novel financial education materials targeted at US immigrants and their children and evaluated their effectiveness using a randomized control trial. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first rigorous evaluation of financial education programs targeted at this population. Compared to a control group, the groups that received the one-time educational intervention were more likely to correctly answer financial knowledge questions immediately after the intervention. The estimated effects of this one-time intervention on knowledge were large, but most of them faded away after six months. Moreover, we find little effect of the treatments on intended financial behavior measures, both immediately and six months later. Our results point to the efficacy of this type of educational material in informing immigrants and their children about important financial information that they are unfamiliar with, including information related to their immigrant status. However, they also suggest that a priority for future research should be to test whether repeated opportunities for learning can increase financial knowledge retention and lead to behavior change. Copyright 2015 by The American Council on Consumer Interests
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Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84952018161&doi=10.1111%2fjoca.12097&partnerID=40&md5=ba948124da8f5e3bd30f0c0dfcbb3676
DOI: 10.1111/joca.12097
ISSN: 00220078
Cited by: 5
Original Language: English