Children Savings Account (CSAs) Intervention Program Components and Program Effectiveness: A Systematic Review

Recently, Children Savings Accounts (CSAs) are gathering popularity, and as of the end of 2016, there are 42 programs in operation in 29 states, serving 313,000 children (CFED, 2016). Each of these programs share theoretical background and, sometimes, intervention goals, but implemented in somewhat different format across the program. More specifically, CSAs programs varies by target populations, by how this program has been initiated or in which context this program has been rolled out. With burgeoning CSAs, not enough is known whether what kind of intervention aspects drives the program. So, this systematic review aims to see how CSAs program participation and components make impacts to intervention goals including level of savings, children’s social-emotional, academic development. 

In the systematic review process, comprehensive electronic database search was completed; electronic database searching, hand searching, reference-mining and grey literature search. Studies that did not featured intervention goals nor the effect of program components are excluded. The review is limited to quantitative, programs in US, English-written, children-targeted studies.

Out of 380 studies after unduplication, 10 studies were ultimately included in the final review after extensive review process of title and abstract review, full-text reading.

The result suggested that universal and inclusive components of CSAs program helps saving. Particularly, SEED OK program’s automatic enrollment components enhances college savings account holding rates up to 99%. Also, benchmark cap, matching, initial deposits were important in inducing savings, specifically, initial deposits are strongly associated with total accumulation, but would not spur new savings (Mason et al, 2010). SEED OK intervention were effective inducing savings, but higher income household children saved more than low- or moderate-income children in both control and treatment group (Clancy et al, 2016; Huang et al, 2014; Nam et al, 2013). CSAs also positively affected children’s development and parental expectation, and its effect was especially noticeable among socially disadvantaged families (Huang et al, 2014; Kim et al, 2015). Same patterns were found in academic development, as savers showed higher reading scores (Elliott et al, 2016; Lewis et al, 2016), and CSAs impacts were even greater for children from low-income families. But positive impact was not found in math scores and number of absences (Elliott et al, 2016; Lewis et al, 2016).

From the systematic review of CSAs programs, universal components such as automatic enrollment is important, and this inclusivity was found to be fundamental for low- or moderate-income households, whom otherwise would not own an account. This marginalized populations benefit the most compared to higher income families in terms of academic achievement, social-emotional development and parental expectations. From this angle, universal components and community support is valuable as it successfully helps achieving original purposes of providing opportunities and financial vehicles even to marginalized population.

The major limitation of this study is that it is hard to tease out the impact of single program components to intervention goals. We know certain aspects of program helps participants, but, in some cases, it is not clear how these program components interact to affect those outcomes.