On My Own: Boosting Financial Literacy Among Disadvantaged Youth in Peru

ABSTRACT Young adults can greatly benefit from financial education because they are starting to earn money and manage their personal finances. We use a randomised control trial to estimate the impacts of #PorMiCuenta (#OnMyOwn), an online asynchronous edutainment‐based financial education program, on financial literacy among poor post‐secondary scholarship recipients. We find this program has a large take‐up (74%) and it improves financial knowledge (by 19.7 percentage points (p.p.)), abilities (22.8 p.p.), attitudes (23.7 p.p.), and behaviour (16.5 p.p.). Our findings suggest this type of financial education approach can be very effective and useful for targeting disadvantaged young adults.