Decentralized Delivery of Financial Education : Evidence from a Country-Wide Field Experiment

Hakizimfura, Emmanuel ; Randall, Douglas ; Zia, Bilal

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: FINANCIAL LITERACY;    FINANCIAL EDUCATION;    COMMUNITY-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT;    CREDIT COOPERATIVE;    RANDOMIZED CONTROL TRIALS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8521
RP-ID  :  WPS8521

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Can financial education delivery besuccessfully decentralized? This paper studies a large-scalefield experiment with 200 Savings and Credit CooperativeAssociations (SACCOs) in Rwanda, and tests competing modelsof local financial education delivery. One-third of SACCOs,randomly selected, were invited to a comprehensivetraining-of-trainers (TOT) workshop and stipulated to sendthe SACCO manager, a loan officer, and a board member to betrained. Another one-third were invited to the sameworkshop, but allowed free selection of trainers. The latterresulted in significantly more community members and fewerloan officers being trained as trainers. Within a year,these trainers successfully disseminated content to 68,000households, with higher session attendance in the autonomousselection group. Analysis from follow-up surveys finds starkdifferences in behavior change: recipients in the autonomousselection group show significant improvements in financialattitudes, rules of thumb, and planning, as well asbudgeting and savings behaviors. In contrast, recipients inthe fixed selection group show no significant improvementson any of the outcome measures. These results underscore theimportance of community-led delivery of financial education programs.