Full report. - Social Research and Demonstration Corp

learn$ave Project: Final ReportBox 3.1What can be learned about financial trainingfrom learn$ave?products at scale. This has been the approach taken inthe UK with both the Child Trust Fund and the SavingsGateway.As will be discussed in greater detail later in this chapter, the researchdesign of learn$ave does not permit measurement of the independenteffects of the financial management training on participant savings,attitudes and other outcomes. Moreover, learn$ave used only oneparticular financial literacy training model — the five-module curriculumdeveloped adapted and developed for this project some nine years ago.In the intervening years, there has been an explosion of activity in thefinancial literacy field, but there has been little solid research about whatworks.The Government of Canada has recently committed to developinga national strategy on financial literacy. Financial literacy programstargeting low-income and low-wealth populations like the learn$avesample are already offered by several community-based organizationsacross the country. Informed by their experience in asset-buildingprograms, SEDI has launched a Centre for Financial Literacy to offercapacity building and advocacy on the topic. Private sector donors andfoundations, such as the Investors Education Fund in Ontario havealso begun to demonstrate support and at least one province (BritishColumbia) has made financial literacy a mandatory component of thesecondary school curriculum. Outside Canada, the OECD, World Bank, EU,Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., Ireland, the UK and other nations andinternational bodies are similarly engaged in financial literacy or financialcapability efforts.The learn$ave demonstration project was not primarily a test of financialliteracy training for low-income adults and must not be interpretedas such. However, its results can provide several policy insights. Forexample, the implementation research can tell us what worked wellin the delivery of the curriculum and whether participants fully tookadvantage of the financial training offered to them (see Chapter 4).Also, the impact analysis can shed light on whether addition of financialeducation and enhanced case management services can enhance theimpact of the matched saving incentive on financial behaviours such asbudgeting, avoiding hardship and planning ahead financially, in additionto saving more (see Chapter 5 and Chapter 6).Social Development, New America Foundation, BrookingsInstitute and CFED have proposed that the solution tothe question of scale might be to strip the IDA modeldown to its core as a matched savings account, or at leastreduce the role played by the services (e.g., Sherraden,2005). Like other assisted savings instruments, accountscould be publicly subsidized but administered throughthe income tax system and delivered through financialinstitutions that have the capacity to market and deliverIn designing the project, it was hoped that learn$avemight be able to make an important contribution to thispolicy debate. Thus, the decision was made by projectleads to create two separate experimental groups whowould receive either the financial incentive (the matchedsaving credits) alone or the financial incentive with theservices (enhanced case management and financialmanagement training). The final results from learn$ave,which include assessment of the incremental impacts ofthe services as well as their cost (see Box 3.1 for more onthis), should shed a great deal of light on whether moreeasily scaled-up models might be effective.Phase 3 Investing in human capitalIn the third stage of the program model, it was expectedthat participants would stop building their accountbalances and draw them down to invest in one or moreforms of adult learning or starting a small business.At this stage, then, it was expected that the increasedfinancial capital would lead directly to increases in humancapital investments and small business start-up. Over thelonger term, perhaps well beyond the end of the projecttimeframe of nine years, these investments were expectedto yield sufficient returns on investment to improve thelabour market outcomes (both in terms of participationand earnings) for participants, helping more of themexit poverty than would have been the case without theproject. In other words, more saving was expected toyield more learning which was expected to yield betteremployment and a measurable increase in householdresources. Key questions regarding this phase of theprogram model include:• Will learn$ave participants invest in more formal learningby taking more courses or programs than they wouldhave otherwise?Although some interest in adult learning opportunitieswas nearly a pre-requisite for project enrolment sinceparticipants self-selected, the primary research aim wasto see whether working age adults would be responsive toan incentive to upgrade their training or return to school.This means that to be considered successful, learn$avewould have to show some measurable increases in theparticipation and/or persistence in adult learning overand above what would have been the case without theproject. Given that the project attracted only participantswho already had some interest in adult learning, it isreasonable to expect that many of these would havefound other means to pursue that goal (for example bySocial Research and Demonstration Corporation Chapter 3 | 23