The role of financial literacy in households’ asset accumulation process: evidence from Ghana

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of financial literacy training on household asset accumulation using data collected from a randomised controlled trial implemented in Ghana. Financial assets are measured using account holdings and savings while durable assets and their decomposed components are captured using their total values. After testing for baseline balance, impact is estimated using treatment effect models. We find that financial literacy training plays a significant role in accumulation of both financial and durable assets, but the impact is more evident in the accumulation of productive durable assets. Our overall findings on productive and non-productive assets are robust to alternative conceptualisations of what constitutes productive and non-productive assets. Our results also show that financial literacy training has an impact on the accumulation of both total and productive assets in female-beneficiary households, as well as enhancing account holdings for females, although this effect was larger for males. The analyses for different age cohorts also revealed that financial literacy training results in higher asset accumulation among younger household heads.