In this edition of our “Ask the Experts” series, we discuss the effectiveness of personal finance education as we know it with Dr. Shawn Cole from Harvard Business School, Professor Lauren Willis from Loyola Law School – Los Angeles, Dr. Olivia Mitchell from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, Dr. Douglass Bernheim from Stanford University, Dr. Richard Serlin from the University of Arizona’s Norton School of Family & Consumer Sciences, and Annamaria Lusardi from The George Washington University School of Business.
Is there actually a case to be made against personal finance education? While that might initially sound about as foolish as buying a house you can’t afford with an interest-only loan, there’s actually a group of pretty smart people out there who are arguing something along those lines.
Dr. Shawn A. Cole, an MIT grad who now teaches finance at Harvard Business School, and Professor Lauren Willis, who will join the Harvard Law School faculty as a visiting professor next fall after teaching at Loyola (Ca.) Law for eight years, are two of the most outspoken champions of this cause, if you will.
Their argument centers around research which indicates that little or no correlation exists between the type of state-mandated personal finance education programs we’ve seen pop up across the country in the last 15 years or so and improved consumer performance later in life.
The aforementioned research in question stems, in part, from a pair of “working papers” that Cole co-authored with Anna Paulson – an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and Gauri Kartini Shastry – an assistant professor of economics at Wellesley College. They found that while increased mathematics requirements and additional years of general education do improve ultimate financial performance, personal finance-specific content has no quantifiable impact. Instead, they argue that overall cognitive development is the most important byproduct of continued education.
So, the question is: Do you buy it?
Before you answer, it’s important to note that Cole and Shastry aren’t against financial literacy programs per se, but rather that they find fault with the practice of blindly funding them in the absence of evidence that they’re truly helpful. That’s obviously sound reasoning, but you also have to consider that Cole and Shastry’s findings are directly at odds with previous research on the topic.
The Counter-Argument & Research Behind It
One notable study – from Dr. Douglass Bernheim at Stanford University – did indeed identify a correlation between financial education and improved money management, finding that students who went through state-mandated financial literacy programs saved significantly more than those who did not, primarily because the courses served to demystify the often daunting subject of personal finance. While Cole’s research mostly discounts these findings, largely due to the contention that Bernheim’s analytical approach was off-base, Bernheim is quick to offer a retort.
To be fair, Cole says that his research team was able to replicate Bernheim’s results using a variety of different data sets – including Census data, data from the government’s Survey of Income and Program Participation, and credit bureau records – yet these results disappeared when the “proper” analytical controls were factored in.
The Steps We Can Take
Data sets and research rivalries aside, the most important question of all still remains: What do we do to address our collective lack of financial know-how?
Well, doing nothing isn’t really an option given the scope of the problem. U.S. consumers now owe more than $800 billion to credit card companies, at least $70 billion of which we incurred in the past two years alone despite the Great Recession’s wake-up call. Then there’s the more than $1 trillion in outstanding student loans, widespread mortgage defaults, and so on. When you think about it, we’re also risking another economic meltdown by not addressing the issue head on.
Mitchell offers the following suggestions:
- Strongly encourage financial education in high school and college (not necessarily through state-mandated programs as they currently exist).
- Perhaps require passing a short financial understanding test before allowing people to take out credit cards and loans or mortgages.
- Encouraging employers to help provide financial education in the workplace.
That course of action, of course, necessitates identifying an effective and financially-efficient way to teach personal finance. We’ve obviously yet to come to a consensus on how to do that, but the good news for all of us is that a lot of really bright people are working on it.
Dr. Richard Serlin – a budgeting expert and professor of personal finance at the University of Arizona – says that we can start by adjusting the subject matter of financial literacy programs as well as establishing some requirements for the folks who teach it.
The Global Center for Financial Literacy
One particularly interesting initiative to identify the best way to teach personal finance and thereby make it more likely that people will naturally heed Cole’s advice is taking shape just a few blocks from WalletHub’s offices, at The George Washington University.
After 20 years at Dartmouth College, Dr. Annamaria Lusardi recently came to GW with big plans. She is working to establish the Global Center for Financial Literacy
This is obviously a lot to think about and decisions about how to address the global financial literacy pandemic must be made in the very near future in order to right the economic ship and keep it from taking on water in the years to come. We at WalletHub will certainly keep an eye on the progress, and the experts whose insights we’ve shared in this article will surely be in the thick of things as well.
Ask the Experts
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