Five Steps to Planning Success. Experimental Evidence from U.S. Households

摘要: In this paper, we design and field a low-cost, easily-replicable financial education program called “Five Steps,” covering five basic planning concepts that relate to retirement. We conduct experiment evaluate the overall impact of Steps” on probability sample American population. different treatment arms, quantify relative delivering through video narrative formats. Our results show short videos narratives (each takes about three minutes) have sizable short-run effects objective measures respondent knowledge. Moreover, keeping informational content relatively constant, format has significant other psychological levers behavioral change: motivation self-efficacy are significantly higher when used, which ultimately influences knowledge acquisition. Follow-up tests respondents’ approximately eight months after interventions suggest between one-quarter one-third gain one-fifth gains persist. Thus, simple both in run medium run.