Financial Education in the Workplace: Combining Experimental Evidence with Administrative Data

Description du projet

Améliorer l’éducation financière sur le lieu de travail

La gestion des finances personnelles nécessite de comprendre les concepts financiers de base. Malheureusement, seul un tiers des personnes en sont capables. Les inégalités socio-économiques et entre les sexes persistent, tandis que la complexité des marchés et la banque numérique accroissent les enjeux. Le projet FINANCEforALL, financé par le CER, testera une intervention à grande échelle en matière d’éducation financière auprès de la population active portugaise. Il explorera comment l’éducation façonne les connaissances financières individuelles, les comportements et les résultats à long terme tels que l’épargne, le crédit, l’emploi et l’entrepreneuriat. Ces résultats apporteront un éclairage sur les retombées positives sur les collègues, les entreprises et les économies locales, offrant ainsi une perspective unique sur la manière dont l’éducation financière sur le lieu de travail peut favoriser la stabilité financière et le développement économique.

Objectif

Understanding and managing personal finances is crucial for promoting individuals’ financial and economic well-being. Yet, financial literacy remains low globally, with only one-third of people understanding basic financial concepts. In addition, socioeconomic and gender financial literacy gaps persist, exacerbating social inequalities. Increased complexity of financial markets and personal responsibility due to longer life expectancy, the emergence of private pension plans, and the digitalization of banking underscore the need for national strategies to promote financial literacy. Those can empower individuals, enhance financial stability, and promote inclusive economic development.

FINforALL will evaluate the impact of a large-scale financial literacy intervention on the working population in Portugal, a developed country with below-average financial literacy. It investigates how financial education shapes individuals’ financial knowledge and behavior and how these effects extend to co-workers, firms, and local economies. While financial literacy programs have been studied globally, this project analyses often-overlooked spillover effects, which are important to designing cost-effective interventions.

The experimental design involves three randomization units: municipalities, firms, and employees. It combines survey data collected during the experiment with unique administrative data at the individual level (credit registry, tax filings, property registry, and private banks’ transactions) and firm-level (financial statements and matched employee-employer). These data allow me to examine the short- and long-term effects on individual outcomes, such as assets, credit, income, consumption, saving, employment, entrepreneurship, and broader effects on firms and local economies.

FINforALL will be the first to examine the direct and spillover effects of financial education at the workplace, offering new insights into its broader implications of financial education.