problem with adult workshops. Further, well-informed students have the opportunity to modify not only their own financial choices, but also to act as agents of change in their households’ financial decisions. Yet, despite the potential benefits of financial education for youth, we simply do not know what works and the few existing studies show either conflicting results, are too narrowly focused, or suffer from important identification concerns.<sup>3</sup> This paper addresses these shortcomings by using a randomized control trial to study the impact of a comprehensive financial education program for public high school students in Brazil. The program spanned 17 months and was integrated in classroom curricula of Mathematics, Science, History, and Portuguese. The instruction used new textbooks with interactive classroom exercises on financial education themes, take-home exercises such as creating household budgets with parents, and role playing assignments. The curriculum was complemented by teacher training, web learning tools, and instructor handbooks. As such, the intensity of treatment of this program was much stronger than typical one-off financial education workshops. To date, our study is the largest randomized evaluation in the financial education literature, covering 868 public high schools in six Brazilian states and approximately 20,000 students.

As part of our study design, schools were first stratified by state, pair-wise matched by school and community characteristics, and then randomly assigned to treatment and control. To measure the effects of the financial education program on financial knowledge and behavior, we collected data in schools through three rounds consisting of baseline (August 2010), follow-up 1 (December 2010), and follow-up 2 (December 2011). Follow-up survey results show that the program caused a quarter of a standard deviation improvement in students’ financial knowledge, as measured by an SAT-like financial proficiency test. In fact, the entire distribution of scores shifted to the right with students at all levels of capability showing marked improvements in test scores. On financial behavior, we find a statistically significant increase of 1.4 percentage points in saving up for purchases (compared to 12.9 percent in the control group), and significant improvements in the likelihood of making budgets and negotiating prices and payment methods.

We also examine “trickle-up” effects of the program on parents to test whether students can act as agents of change in their households. Many of the take-home exercises involved interaction with parents such as making household budgets or researching and comparing interest rates. We survey parents and identify several findings. As proof of concept, parents in treatment schools were significantly more likely to report that their children discuss financial matters with them at home and that they volunteer to help organize household budgets. In addition, we detect improvements in parental financial knowledge on standard financial literacy questions used in the literature. And finally, we find significant improvements in parental financial behaviors, with an increase of 0.67 percentage points in the savings rate (from a control group mean of 12.2 percent) and improvements in the likelihood of keeping household budgets.

> 3 See section 2 of this paper for a detailed discussion of the existing literature.

3