OeNB Financial Literacy Evaluation Series: Is financial knowledge enough? Reviewing impact assessments of financial education interventions

Authors: Theresa Lorenz, Sandra Mauser und Maximilian Zieser
Year: 2025

This article presents a thematic review of the financial literacy evaluation landscape in OECD countries from 2010 to 2024, analyzing 68 (quasi-)experimental and peer-reviewed studies. We identify key patterns across study contexts, intervention types, outcome measures, results and methodological approaches. Our findings indicate that financial education interventions consistently improve financial knowledge across diverse contexts and target populations. However, evidence on their impact on financial attitudes and behaviors remains mixed and appears to be largely contingent on the intervention and study design. Given the considerable heterogeneity across studies, we propose methodological guidelines to enhance comparability and facilitate more robust conclusions on intervention effectiveness. To better understand the relation between financial education interventions and intended impacts, we recommend that future studies place a stronger focus on the underlying causal mechanisms and devote greater efforts toward assessing these effects in study designs.

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