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Encouraged by research, more states are requiring schools to teach personal finance.

How is the stockmarket looking today?” asks Jennifer Varga, a teacher at Memorial Middle School in Willingboro, New Jersey, a suburb about 20 miles outside Philadelphia. She has projected a live visualisation of S&P 500 companies sorted by market cap onto the board at the front of her classroom. It is a sea of mostly red boxes. A 14-year-old pupil quickly answers：“Trash!” She is not wrong—it was a rubbish morning for the index on June 11th. Ms Varga adjusts the picture to show the S&P’s rise over the past month, then the past six months. The pupils nod approvingly at the sea of green boxes as Ms Varga explains the virtues of investing long-term.

受研究推动，越来越多的州要求学校教授个人理财课程。在离费城约 20 英里的新泽西州的郊区威灵伯勒，纪念中学（Memorial Middle School）的老师詹妮 弗·瓦尔加（Jennifer Varga）这样询问学生：“今天股市行情怎么样？”她在教室前方的白板上投影了 一幅按市值排序的标普 500 公司实时可视化图表。白板上大部分是红色的方块。一位 14 岁的学生迅 速回答：“糟透了！”她没说错，因为 6 月 11 日早上，标普 500 指数确实表现不佳。瓦尔加老师调整 了图片，展示了该指数过去一个月的走势，随后又展示了过去六个月的涨幅情况。当看到一片绿色的 方块时，学生们赞许地点点头，瓦尔加老师借此解释了长期投资的优点。

02

Personal-finance courses that teach pupils best practices for managing their money are spreading across America, propelled by recent state laws requiring such instruction. Since 2020, 17 states have adopted mandates that make taking a financial-literacy course a requirement for high-school graduation, bringing the total up to 25. According to Tim Ranzetta, the co-founder of Next Gen Personal Finance, an advocacy group, 53% of pupils are in a state that currently requires or has decided to soon require such a course to graduate. That figure will probably grow. New York State is considering a mandate, and California has a bill in the works（potentially driving up the percentage to about 70% of all American pupils）.

 Pupils in these classes learn not only how to buy and sell shares, but how to save their earnings in order to have something to invest in the first place. Courses teach how to properly bank, budget, manage credit and pay for college. They cover comparison shopping and the basics of how to plan and track daily expenses.（“I save all my money and spend my parents’ money!” one future hedge-fund manager said.）

近日各州颁布法律，要求开设向学生传授最佳理财方法的课程，受此推动，这类个人理财课程正在美 国各地推广。自 2020 年来，已有 17 个州通过了相关法令，要求高中将财经素养课程纳入毕业要求， 目前有 25 个州推行此类政策。倡议组织“新生代个人理财（Next Gen Personal Finance）”的联合创 始人蒂姆·兰泽塔（Tim Ranzetta）表示，目前全美 53%的学生所在的州已经或即将要求修读此类课程 才能毕业。这个数目可能还会增加。纽约州正在考虑出台强制规定，加利福尼亚州也在推进一项相关 法案。类似举动可能会推动财经素养课程覆盖率达到约 70%。

在这些课程中，学生不仅学习如何买卖股票，还会学习如何将自己的收入存起来，以便起初有资金进 行投资。这些课程还教授学生如何正确地进行储蓄、编制预算、管理信贷以及支付大学费用。课程还 涵盖了比较购物、计划与追踪日常开支的基础知识。（“我把自己的钱存起来，花我父母的钱！”一位未 来的对冲基金经理这样说道。）

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Young people badly need these courses. According to the Programme for International Student Assessment, an international survey, only 10% of 15-year-olds in the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, score highly on financial-literacy assessments. Are personalfinance courses the answer? For a long time, the research said no. Many studies, including a meta-analysis from 2014 that was cited over 2,500 times, claimed that financial-literacy courses were ineffective. The finding made intuitive sense; many teenagers have yet to work or manage a household.

But more recent findings have changed the picture. “Research has gotten better,” explains Carly Urban, an economics professor at Montana State University. The courses themselves have also improved. Studies that use the gold standard of investigation—a randomised controlled trial—have found that the courses are effective in improving financial knowledge and behaviour. A meta-analysis of 76 randomised experiments in 33 countries found that people who take these courses learn the content, save more and budget better. Other studies have found that pupils who take personal-finance courses in high school borrow less money. If they do borrow for college, they choose low-cost options. And lowincome borrowers exposed to personal-finance coursework are more likely to pay down their balances and steer clear of exploitative, high-interest pay-day loans. They are also less likely to have credit-card debt, and they have higher credit scores and fewer defaults.

年轻人亟需此类课程。根据国际研究项目 PISA 的调查结果，在主要由富裕国家组成的经合组织（OECD） 中，只有 10%的 15 岁青少年在财经素养评估中得到较高分数。个人理财课程是否是解决方案呢？长 期以来，研究结果表明这可能不是解决问题的途径。许多研究，包括 2014 年一项被引用超过 2500 次 的荟萃分析，都声称财经素养课程效果不佳。这个结论从直觉上也说得通，毕竟许多青少年尚未开始 工作，也未管理家务。

但更近期的研究改变了这一局面。“研究有所改进。”蒙大拿州立大学经济学教授卡莉·厄本（Carly Urban） 解释道。课程本身也有进步。采用随机对照试验这一黄金标准的研究发现，个人理财课程在提升金融 知识、改进理财行为等方面确实有效。一项在 33 个国家开展 76 场随机实验的荟萃分析发现，参加财 经素养课程的学员确实学到了金融知识，并且储蓄更多、预算管理得更好。

其他研究发现，在高中参加过个人理财课程的学生负债更少。如果他们确实需要借钱上大学，也会选 择成本较低的方案。他们也更不容易产生信用卡债务，拥有更高的信用评分，并且拖欠贷 款的情况也更少。

04

Instruction at school is necessary because it is not always available at home. “Everyone always says, ‘I wish someone taught me this when I was a kid,” says Tony Thurmond, California’s school superintendent. “I hear that from people every time I talk about it.” Naysayers worry about adding one more graduation requirement to California’s long list, but Mr Thurmond is willing to remove courses with less direct bearing on life skills.

“When I was 20, it would have been nice to have this class,” Ms Varga says after the pupils she was educating about the S&P 500 have gone to lunch. She got into some financial trouble as a young adult before she learned the subjects she now teaches and improved her own money management. “I want them to be better than my generation.”

在学校进行财经素养教育是必要的，因为学生在家庭中不一定能学到这些知识。“每个人都会说，‘我希望在我小时候有人教过我这些东西。’” 加州教育局局长托尼·瑟蒙德（Tony Thurmond）表示，“每次谈到这个问题，我都会听到人们这样说。”持反对意见的人担心加州的毕业要求已经很多，再增加一 项会让学生负担更重，但瑟蒙德表示，愿意取消那些与生活技能关系不大的课程。

“在我 20 岁的时候，要是有这样的课程就好了。”教授标准普尔 500 指数的瓦尔加老师在学生们去吃 午饭后这样说道。她在年轻时曾陷入财务问题，后来才学习了她现在所教授的知识，并改进了理财方 式。她表示，“我希望我的学生比我们这一代更会理财。”