Does Providing Women Living in Rural Areas with Innovative Financial Education Change Household Expenditure and Saving Behaviour?

We test whether innovative and intensive treatments can surpass the traditional financial literacy education, with the target group of young women at the age of 20 to 30 in rural Bangladesh. The first treatment follows the traditional approach of financial training intervention: each member would take part in a short course of basic financial knowledge using a standardized curriculum.

We propose the use of the financial diary as a less intensive, and more applicable, as the simplified alternative to the traditional financial literacy program. Financial diaries are believed to help households manage daily expenses: cut unnecessary expenditure and save for unforeseen expenses.

Thirdly, we employ personal coaching as a real but narrower role for "just-in-time" financial intervention, tied to specific behaviours it intends to help. Counselings has the advantage of high relevance, low memory lapse between information receipt and behaviour. This approach is an attempt to test for the claim of "financial education fallacy": while "outsourcing" financial decision can appear to be expensive at first glance, it is a more feasible and cost-effective option once we have taken true cost of effective financial education into account.

We develop a set tests to measure the impact of our interventions on multiple dimensions of financial literacy including financial confidence, financial attitude and financial behaviour. Other objectives measurements involve changes in savings and income, numeracy tests, and a financial knowledge test.

Subject to additional funding, participants will be invited to join an artifactual games to measure the impact of interventions on the treatment group risk preferences and level of financial confidence. Moreover, we plan to further survey participants one year after the program has ended to examine whether improvements in their development outcomes persist over the time

2018-02-12

2019-02-28

Financial literacy is measured using four outcomes of interest: financial knowledge, financial confidence, financial behaviour, and financial attitude.
Savings behaviour is measured by household account balance post treatment.
Other outcomes variables of interest include women empowerment and exposure to financial instruments.

The financial literacy outcomes will be measured by the knowledge, numeracy and scenario-based tests before and after treatment.
The exposure to financial instruments are measured by the likelihood of intention to apply for saving accounts, loan, pension fund, and other tools. Finally, female autonomy is represented by the likelihood of new employment, a rise in income, the intention to open a new business, and the responses to women-empower scenario surveyed questions.

Financial behaviour outcomes will be measured by the performance in the post-treatment lab-in-the-field games: risk-taking, over-confidence, time discount, and leadership. The husband of the household will also be invited to participate in gender games.

Participants are randomly allocated into three different treatment groups. Group A will only receive financial diary tool and guidance, Group B will undertake a financial training using standardised curriculum and Group C will have receive A or B plus the access to tailored financial counselling. The control group will receive none of the treatment.

Randomization done in office by a computer

individual women. randomization would be carried out at the individual level. women from the same villages will be randomized in one of the three treatment groups. control villages will not have any intervention.

Yes

120 villages

1800 women (from 1800 households), roughly 15 households per village.

500 women in Treatment A - simplified financial diary.
500 women in Treatment B - standard financial education.
500 women in Treatment C - financial counselling: 250 women will receive financial diary plus counselling while the other 250 will receive financial training and financial counselling
300 women in Control group.

(This section will be updated after the pilot)