Financial Education as Human Capital: Secondary School Curriculum Design and Macroeconomic Outcomes Across OECD Nations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.58445/rars.4077Keywords:
Financial literacy, Financial Education, PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), Secondary school curriculum designAbstract
This paper examines how secondary school financial literacy scores and curriculum design relate to macroeconomic outcomes. The sample is an unbalanced panel of ten selected OECD nations, comprising 24 country–wave observations from the 2012, 2015, 2018, and 2022 PISA cycles. We distinguish integrated curricula, which cover investment mechanics such as equity markets and pension structures, from thrift-based curricula centered on saving and debt avoidance. Three outcomes are considered: domestic private credit as a percentage of GDP, the Gini index, and annual real GDP growth. Models use ordinary least squares with wave-year fixed effects and HC3 heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors. Neither financial literacy scores nor curriculum type is significant under the Bonferroni-adjusted confirmatory threshold (α∗ = 0.0083 for six tests). One coefficient stands out: secondary school enrollment is HC3-significant (p = 0.004). Yet its bootstrap 95% confidence interval includes zero. The evidence is therefore suggestive, not causal; curriculum assignment lacks exogenous variation.
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