Financial Education As Human Capital: Secondary School Curriculum Design And Macroeconomic Outcomes Across OECD Nations

Abstract

This paper examines country-level associations between secondary school financial literacy, curriculum design, and macroeconomic outcomes in an unbalanced panel of ten selected OECD nations comprising 24 country–wave observations from the 2012, 2015, 2018, and 2022 PISA cycles. It distinguishes integrated curricula, which include investment mechanics, from thrift-based curricula, which emphasize saving and debt avoidance. Ordinary least squares models with wave-year fixed effects and HC3 heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors assess associations with domestic private credit as a percentage of GDP, income inequality measured by the Gini index, and annual real GDP growth. Financial literacy scores and curriculum type are not statistically significant for any outcome under the Bonferroni-adjusted confirmatory threshold (α* = 0.0083 for six tests). Gross secondary school enrollment, a control variable evaluated at α = 0.05, is positively associated with private credit under HC3 inference (β̂ = 1.953, p = 0.004), but its country-level bootstrap 95% confidence interval includes zero. The signal is fragile. It does not constitute robust evidence. Because curriculum assignment is not exogenous and the sample is small, all findings are associational and should not be interpreted causally.

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