In just three years, the number of U.S. states requiring a standalone personal finance course for high school graduation has nearly doubled—from 17 states in 2022 to 30 states in 2025. According to a survey, conducted in July 2025 by Badcredit.org, 83% of parents think “schools should teach money skills over Shakespeare.” Given a tumultuous and unpredictable economic climate, parents, teachers, and policy makers are all painfully aware of the need for our future generations to develop financial capability. This surge reflects a growing national consensus that financial education is essential for young people, especially as they face rising costs of living, student debt, and complex financial decisions earlier in life. 

The research on financial literacy education is clear as Kaiser and colleagues found in their meta-analysis of 76 randomized experiments in 2023: When high quality content is implemented in a strategic manner, it not only predicts knowledge gain, but also future fiscal behaviors. If this is true, then why hasn’t every state adopted rigorous financial education standards for their students before launching them into the world after graduation?  

Part of the reason might be that many of those making decisions about these programs have not been shown their value in a way that resonates with them. Beyond making them more capable adults in their financial decisions, what else can we say about the “return on investment” or ROI of personal finance education for students? Actually, quite a lot.  

The concept of social ROI for financial education was developed by the in-house research team at Everfi to better show our sponsors exactly how much good they are doing for world at large by providing digital learning experiences to students at no cost to the schools implementing them. Researchers utilized the data collected from students who have taken Everfi’s financial education courses, specifically focused on their knowledge gain, attitudinal shifts, and behavioral intentions. This data was then combined with academic research literature and publicly available economic and industry data to tell a different kind of story about the impact of personal finance education.  

At the highest level, here was the development approach:  

1. Identify target behaviors that are influenced by Everfi’s financial education courses.  
2. Quantify the economic benefit of improving those behaviors based on social science research and economic data.  
3. Evaluate how many learners might benefit from improved behaviors as a result of receiving education.  
4. Calculate any discount factors related to the student’s likelihood to actually engage in future behaviors.  
5. Finally, apply the economic value to all the students participating in financial education to derive the projected economic benefit for each student.  

Let’s take a look at how this applies to a specific example behavior: avoiding debt. Teaching students about avoiding debt is one of the many learning objectives in Everfi’s flagship course Financial Literacy for High School Students. After taking the course, students are more likely to correctly answer questions about strategies for avoiding debt. Economic research data shows that the average student who accrues credit card debt will pay over $3,500 in interest on that debt. To identify students who would be the most vulnerable to that debt, we compared pre and post measurements in our courses and found 22% of our student sample was at risk for ending up in that situation, but most of them (87%) improved in their knowledge and skills by the end of the course.  

We must consider that not everyone who intends to engage in a behavior (like avoiding debt) will be successful, so using behavior research, we discounted 9% of that sample from the optimal outcome. This suggests that about 2% of all our students will avoid taking on unnecessary debt because of taking our financial literacy course. If we multiply that by the millions of students who take our course every single year and distribute the impact evenly across all of them (including those who aren’t at risk or will not change), we should see at least $63 per student in broad economic value through debt avoidance alone. 

Suddenly, the impact of financial education isn’t abstract or linked only to increases in knowledge or improved self-confidence. Now we have real world economic value attributed to the number of students who are given this type of experience. We think this will help convince policymakers about the need for this kind of education while, at the same time, providing support for financial institutions in their decision to sponsor this content. Not only do parents and educators see this type of education as critical for children, but now we have the specific dollar amounts to show exactly how beneficial it will be for those making difficult decisions about required content for graduation.  

With financial education being so critical for parents, teachers, administrators, and policymakers, it is imperative we continue to find new ways to show the value of this type of instruction to stakeholders. This includes those who develop, share, and sponsor this type of content. To learn more, contact us to speak with a member of the team.