What Is Youth Saving ?

Young people often learn about money informally through socialization, such as observing and listening to their caregivers, influential adults, and peers. Youth are not consistently introduced to more formal instruction on money matters—for example, through a classroom curriculum or other training on saving, spending, allowances, and the importance of focusing on short-term goals (i.e., purchasing an item, saving money, paying off a debt) to be able to get to long-term financial goals (i.e., saving for college, buying a house).7

Distinguishing what youth do not understand about financial topics is important. It is also beneficial to understand the specific concerns that youth have when it comes to money. In the meantime, however, there are a number of immediate opportunities to significantly increase young people’s access to savings services. The following three obstacles in particular require increased attention, evidence and communication:

Regulatory: 

In most countries, minors cannot own or operate a bank account without the participation of an adult as the legal custodian, trustee or joint owner. Sometimes this adult must be the youth’s legal guardian, foreclosing opportunities for other relatives, teachers or NGO staff to assist in opening accounts. For youth with trustworthy adults in their lives, such restrictions may create an opportunity for fruitful dialogue about money with a responsible mentor. However, many youth neither have, live with, nor trust their parents/guardians – or sometimes any adult for that matter – with access to their money. Such youth, often among the most marginalized, must therefore rely on informal savings mechanisms. While organized youth savings groups have proven successful in rural contexts, transient populations make them less viable in urban settings, where cash may be at even higher risk of theft.

Commercial: 

If small savers are costly for formal financial institutions to administer, how much more costly are the even smaller savings of young people, who will take longer to become profitable clients using more lucrative payment and loan services? The business case for youth savings is a long-term proposition that requires vision, willingness to invest and, when dealing with low-income youth, some level of social responsibility. Our (competitively- but still self-selected) bank partners at Youth Save possess all three; however, though copycat products have sprung up in some of our markets, it is not clear whether the majority of banks will be willing to follow their lead. Government deposits of child-directed welfare payments into youth accounts could provide an incentive, as could industry-wide branding campaigns that created positive pressure for more banks to offer such products. (Easing the regulatory requirements noted above would also make it simpler.

Attitudinal: 

Despite the evidence, most people still believe that young people cannot save, do not want to save, or should not be saving (after all, most people are not reading this blog). But without getting buy-in on the “why” – not only from bankers and policy makers, but also from parents and teachers and local leaders in low-income young people’s own communities – the “how” questions will remain largely irrelevant.