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Financial Education in Elementary Schools in Brazil

Last registered on September 15, 2023
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Financial Education in Elementary Schools in Brazil
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0012050
Initial registration date
September 07, 2023

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
September 15, 2023, 8:47 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
Brazil
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Caio Piza
Affiliation
World Bank
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Vivian Amorim
PI Affiliation
World Bank
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PI Name
Isabela Furtado
PI Affiliation
Institute of Education and Research (Insper)
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Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2014-08-11
End date
2016-03-31
Keywords
Behavior, Education, Other
Additional Keywords
Financial proficiency, behavioral change, longer-term effects.
JEL code(s)
D14, I21, I25, O12, O15
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
This paper investigates whether providing financial education in elementary and middle school grades improves students' financial proficiency and actual behavior. We use a cluster randomized control trial to evaluate a pilot program implemented in 101 Brazilian municipal schools in 2015. The findings show positive impacts on financial proficiency, mainly among middle school students, and suggestive evidence of improvements in short-term behavioral outcomes. However, the analysis indicates that the program did not impact students' school achievements in both the short and longer terms, which suggests that the program's effects were not strong enough to shift students' behavior decisions.
External Link(s)
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper.

Registration Citation

Citation
Amorim, Vivian , Isabela Furtado and Caio Piza. 2023. "Financial Education in Elementary Schools in Brazil." AEA RCT Registry. September 15. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.12050-1.1
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The intervention consisted of four financial education textbooks tailored to different elementary and middle school grades. The curriculum was conceived to introduce the role of financial education in students’ daily lives by developing financial concepts such as savings, consumption, and waste; making students able to identify situations related to financially responsible attitudes, estimate the budget necessary for financial projects, and find relevant information in the press media for decision-making in finance. The pilot was run in municipal schools of Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, and Joinville, one of the largest cities of Santa Catarina state.
Intervention Start Date
2015-03-02
Intervention End Date
2015-12-18

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
financial proficiency, consumption and saving attitudes, and behavioral change.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
We used principal component analysis to compute the attitudinal indexes.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Human capital accumulation.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We used a stratified cluster randomized trial to evaluate the impacts of the pilot in the municipal schools of Manaus and Joinville. We used the school census data of 2014 to select a sample of 201 eligible schools. We then stratified the sample by the municipality and three school types: schools that only offer elementary school grades (first to fifth grades in Brazil), schools that only offer middle school grades (sixth to ninth grades in Brazil), and schools that offer all elementary school grades, totaling six strata. We randomly assigned 101 schools out of the 201 to receive the program in the school year of 2015. In agreement with ENEF, we selected grades 3, 5, 7, and 9 to be part of the evaluation.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization was done in the office by a computer.
Randomization Unit
Schools
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
201 schools
Sample size: planned number of observations
9,000 elementary and middle school students
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
101 assigned to treatment and 100 assigned to control.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
0.1 of a standard deviation in both financial proficiency and consumption, and saving attitudes (at 5% level).
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
Yes
Intervention Completion Date
December 11, 2015, 12:00 +00:00
Data Collection Complete
Yes
Data Collection Completion Date
December 18, 2015, 12:00 +00:00
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)
201
Was attrition correlated with treatment status?
No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations
14655
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms
201 clusters, 101 assigned to treatment 9204 students in schools assigned to treatment 9353 students in schools assigned to control
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

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Program Files

Program Files
Yes
Program Files URL
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/35w5epny5wgw7gf6apfmi/h?rlkey=p3nhv28aezgp127xc444t3ue3&dl=0
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials