TY - JOUR AU - Bayer,Patrick J. AU - Bernheim,B. Douglas AU - Scholz,John Karl TI - The Effects of Financial Education in the Workplace: Evidence from a Survey of Employers JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 5655 PY - 1996 Y2 - July 1996 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5655 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5655.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Patrick Bayer Department of Economics Duke University 213 Social Sciences Durham, NC 27708 Tel: 919/660-1832 E-Mail: patrick.bayer@duke.edu B. Douglas Bernheim Department of Economics Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-6072 Tel: 650/725-8732 Fax: 650/725-5702 E-Mail: bernheim@stanford.edu John Karl Scholz University of Wisconsin - Madison Department of Economics 1180 Observatory Drive Madison, WI 53706 Tel: 608/262-5380 Fax: 608/263-3876 E-Mail: jkscholz@facstaff.wisc.edu M2 - featured in NBER digest on 1997-03-01 AB - We examine the effects of education on financial decision-making skills by identifying an interesting source of variation in pertinent training. During the 1990s, an increasing number of individuals were exposed to programs of financial education provided by their employers. If, as some have argued, low saving frequently results from a failure to appreciate economic vulnerabilities, then education of this form could prove to have a powerful effect on rates of behavior. The current paper undertakes an analysis of these programs using a previously unexploited survey of employers. We find that both participation in and contributions to voluntary savings plans are significantly higher when employers offer retirement seminars. The effect is typically much stronger for non-highly compensated employees than for highly compensated employees. The frequency of seminars emerges as a particularly important correlate of behavior. We are unable to detect any effects of written materials, such as newsletters and summary plan descriptions, regardless of frequency. We also present evidence on other determinants of plan activity. ER -