can be implemented whereas savings and loan repayment are more dependent on financial standing. Further research to understand these initial findings would help to focus efforts in financial literacy.

# **V. Conclusion**

The 188 papers that were identified for this meta-analysis represent an incredible level of diversity across numerous study characteristics including, importantly, outcome measures. The diversity in both general outcomes (savings, credit performance, record keeping, financial knowledge, etc.) and in how they are measured severely reduces the number of comparable studies for the meta-analysis and metaregressions. Further, effect sizes are not comparable as typically data on control group means are not available for this estimation from the published works. Where randomized controlled trials have been done, the results of impact appear limited at best, indicating perhaps omitted variables or publication bias may be present for studies not employing these rigorous methods. With these caveats, some insights do emerge.

Our meta-analysis suggests that financial education can impact some financial behaviors, including savings and record keeping. These are both considered fundamental to good personal financial management and are potentially behaviors where individuals can exert greater control than in the case of other outcomes such as loan default. Meta-analysis was unable to provide insights regarding the importance of program characteristics on impact due to the nature of the sample and lack of direct comparability. While the intensity (number of hours of exposure to the intervention) was weakly significant in the case of record keeping it was not significant in the other specifications of the model. Other characteristics which could reasonably be expected to influence the effectiveness of interventions (delivery mechanism, duration or period of time during which subjects were exposed to the treatment, location of the intervention such as school, community, workplace) were not shown to be significant but the small sample size limits the power of the statistical analysis.

The difficulty in evaluating this literature for meta-analysis highlights the importance of strengthening and expanding the use of rigorous evaluation methods. Researchers should take care to report more complete statistical information so that others can better understand the strength of the findings and the limitations of the results as well as possibly use the findings in future applications of meta-analysis to this topic. There is also a potential value from defining outcome variables in common terms, including measurement and reporting of dependent variables, to facilitate comparisons across studies. To increase the likelihood that these variables could be used in a large number of studies they should employ simple and replicable definitions and measurement criteria. The use of common questions and/or survey instruments, such as those developed at the World Bank, DfiD, and OECD in the past few years, to measure financial literacy and capability in a target population is a step in the right direction and will help increase the availability of comparable data on what is working in financial education. Finally, new and ongoing research should make use of social science impact evaluation registries undertaken by the American Economic Association and 3ie, to provide a common repository of research in this area for future meta-analyses, as well as avoid issues related to publication bias. Appendix 3 26