The Long Term Benefits of Financial Education (News and Research 314)

What are the long-term effects of high school financial education? | Comparing the randomized treatment and control groups, we have three main findings on long-term financial behavior: the financial education program had no effect on long-run bank account ownership, but a high percentage of students (85 percent) have a bank account after graduating high school; treatment students use fewer expensive credit products; the program led to a lower likelihood of having loans with repayment delays, by about 0.9 percentage point, compared to 15 percent of control students with repayment delays; and eight to nine years after graduating, treatment students are 10 percent more likely to own a formal microenterprise than control students.

Irish workers are not star pupils in upskilling and lifelong learning: Companies need to move further education and training up their agenda | Lifelong learning is human capital, preparation for the world of work and for the uncertain world of tomorrow. To keep up with the relentless pace of change, there is a need to develop new and overarching skills as opposed to those needed to do a specific job. These include problem-solving, self-management and communications as well as developing competency in the social skills required for good teamwork, resilience and collaboration which is becoming ever more important in today’s distributed working environments. These types of broader skills are key in the race between education and technology, which is creating a more precarious working environment as certain types of jobs fall victim to computerization. The flip side of the coin is that automation will also create jobs, but highly skilled workers will be needed to work alongside technology.

Can scripted schooling improve learning?  Enrolling in a Bridge school dramatically improved learning for both preprimary and primary school students, with test score effects among the largest recorded in the international education literature. After two school years, students who attended Bridge because of the scholarship program demonstrated a large test-score advantage over their counterparts who were not offered scholarships on tests that covered English, Kiswahili, Math, Social Studies, and Science. Average test score gains were 1.35 standard deviations for the preschool cohorts and 0.81 standard deviations for the primary school cohorts. When students attended Bridge because of the scholarship, preprimary students learned the equivalent of an additional 1.48 years of schooling over and above the control group, and primary school students learned the equivalent of an additional 0.89 years. These learning gains persist even when the researchers restrict their focus to exam questions not easily answered through rote memorization.

The Loss of the Bison and the Well-Being of Indigenous Nations. | The bison population’s decline led to an immediate and persistent drop in the living standards of bison-reliant Native American societies. In the late nineteenth century, unrestricted hunting pushed the North American bison population from nearly 8 million to near extinction. For the Native Americans of the Great Plains, the Northwest, and the Rocky Mountains, this eliminated a resource that had served as their primary source of livelihood for over 10,000 years and that featured in almost every facet of life. The bison population reduction immediately lowered the material well-being of bison-reliant nations. This decline has persisted to the present day. The researchers argue that the rapid loss of the bison, combined with limited access to credit, permanently altered bison-reliant nations’ dynamic path of development and can help explain the relative poverty today of Indigenous nations in the interior of North America.

Türkiye in Transition – Next-Generation Human Capital Investments for Inclusive Jobs: Policy Note | Türkiye’s long-standing human capital achievements can propel it to the next generation following COVID.

Learning Losses during COVID-19: Global Estimates of an Invisible and Unequal Crisis | This paper presents updated simulation results of the potential effects of COVID-19-related school closures on learning outcomes globally. 

Learning losses in the USA:

Nation’s Report Card Shows Steep Declines in Student Learning | Students lost more ground where remote instruction was more common, but that’s only part of the story.

Strong Link in Big City Districts’ 4th-Grade Math Scores to School Closures | Urban districts that spent the majority of 2020-21 learning remotely lost more ground in fourth-grade math on average than those that reopened sooner.

School Closures Were a Failed Policy | America’s pandemic learning losses are real. We need to see that reality clearly to do better next time.