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

Last registered on October 21, 2019

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Does Providing Women Living in Rural Areas with Innovative Financial Education Change Household Expenditure and Saving Behaviour?
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0002368
Initial registration date
September 30, 2017

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
October 02, 2017, 10:02 AM EDT

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

Last updated
October 21, 2019, 2:25 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Monash University

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies(BIDS)
PI Affiliation
Monash University
PI Affiliation
Monash University

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2018-02-01
End date
2019-12-01
Secondary IDs
Abstract
We use a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) to assess whether either a simplified less intensive financial treatment or a tailored just-in-time financial treatment can perform better than traditional financial literacy education in overcoming financial inclusion barriers for a sample of young women in Bangladesh. The simplified less intensive financial treatment will entail participants self-recording daily income and expenditure using a financial diary. Financial diaries are believed to assist households to manage daily expenses, cut unnecessary expenditure and save for unforeseen expenses. The tailored just-in-time financial treatment will involve participants receiving individualized financial counselling, which will involve provision of advice on matters such as opening a bank account, obtaining credit and debt refinancing, tailored to the participants’ need.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Nguyen, Vy et al. 2019. "Does Providing Women Living in Rural Areas with Innovative Financial Education Change Household Expenditure and Saving Behaviour?." AEA RCT Registry. October 21. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.2368-3.1
Former Citation
Nguyen, Vy et al. 2019. "Does Providing Women Living in Rural Areas with Innovative Financial Education Change Household Expenditure and Saving Behaviour?." AEA RCT Registry. October 21. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/2368/history/55592
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
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

Intervention Start Date
2018-08-01
Intervention End Date
2019-09-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
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. Details are listed in the pre-analysis plan.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
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.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
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.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
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.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
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.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
150 villages
Sample size: planned number of observations
1800 women (from 1800 households), roughly 12 women/households per village.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
600 women in Treatment A - simplified financial diary. 300 from this arm will receive private counselling
600 women in Treatment B - standard financial education. 300 from this arm will receive private counselling
600 women in Control group.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Assume a minimum detectable effect size of 0.2 standard deviations when standardizing the mean values of the main outcome variables of interest. With a minimum sample size 350 for each group, the detectable effect is: Effect 1: The impact of the financial education workshop (b1), Power = 0.96 Effect 2: The impact of financial diary (b2), Power = 0.92 Effect 3: The joint impact of financial education and financial counselling s (b3), Power = 0.85 (More details in Pre-analysis plan)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee
IRB Approval Date
2017-09-11
IRB Approval Number
2017-10656-13528
Analysis Plan

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Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials