How does financial education lead to improved financial behavior and higher financial well-being? An influential Consumer Financial Protection Bureau model (CFPB 2015) proposes that the goal of financial education is to improve financial well-being and that financial education does so by increasing financial knowledge, which improves financial behavior, which improves financial well-being. We test links in the CFPB model, examining the differential roles of objective and subjective knowledge. We also test whether an analogous model might capture effects of physical health education on physical health knowledge, behavior, and well-being.We report a quasi-experiment comparing T2-T1 changes in financial and physical health knowledge, behavior, and well-being over a semester for students enrolled in a personal finance class, a personal health class, or neither. Our study reports the first causal estimates of flow from financial education to financial knowledge to financial behaviors to a validated measure of subjective financial well-being.Financial education caused large changes in both objective and subjective knowledge. Yet only subjective knowledge mediated the large effects of financial education on changes in downstream behaviors. We find weaker but similar results for physical health. Our findings suggest that financial education efforts should refocus to foster subjective knowledge and improved behavior.

中文翻译：

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EXPRESS：金融教育对金融行为和幸福感的影响：改善客观和主观金融知识的中介作用以及身体健康的相似之处

金融教育如何改善金融行为和提高金融福祉？一个有影响力的消费者金融保护局模型（CFPB 2015）提出，金融教育的目标是改善金融福祉，而金融教育通过增加金融知识来实现​​这一目标，从而改善金融行为，从而改善金融福祉。我们测试 CFPB 模型中的链接，检查客观知识和主观知识的不同作用。我们还测试了一个类似的模型是否可以捕捉身体健康教育对身体健康知识、行为和幸福感的影响。我们报告了一项准实验，比较财务和身体健康知识、行为和幸福感的 T2-T1 变化对于参加个人理财课程、个人健康课程或两者都没有的学生来说，需要一个多学期的时间。我们的研究首次对从金融教育到金融知识、金融行为、主观金融福祉的有效衡量标准的流动进行了因果估计。金融教育导致了客观和主观知识的巨大变化。然而，只有主观知识才能调节金融教育对下游行为变化的巨大影响。我们发现身体健康的结果较弱但相似。我们的研究结果表明，金融教育工作应该重新聚焦于培养主观知识和改善行为。