February 24, 2022
By Knology
This study examines the impact of greater spending on youth financial education upon measures designed to capture the experiences and challenges of low- and moderate-income Americans. Despite more states mandating financial education as a requirement for high school graduation, there was no prior canonical data on the important variable of historical spending on financial education by state and by year. Accurately capturing spending trends may tell us more about the quality and depth of financial education than the mere existence of a mandate can.
To fill this gap, Knology created an open-access database of historical spending on financial education across all 50 states. They combined the data with data from the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED) and analyzed outcomes such as income volatility, comfort managing assets and foregone medical care due to costs.