Financial Health

Building Financial Health: There’s an (Unused) App for That

by Maddie Kau & Abigail Kim

Update: the behavioral playbook is now available here.  Cashing a check seems like a simple task. But in practice, it involves many small, hassle-ridden steps that take time and energy: planning when to go, finding a nearby ATM or retail location, remembering to bring the check, traveling to the location, and waiting in line. Fortunately, […]

ideas42 Seminar Series: A Talk with Jack Cao

by ideas42

With the ideas42 Seminar Series, we invite leading scholars to share their insights and what inspires their exploration into human behavior. Our New York office was pleased to host Jack Cao, a 5th year PhD candidate in social psychology at Harvard University. Jack’s research examines the divide between the conscious values we try to uphold and […]

Learning Behavioral Design, Part 3: 5 Lessons for Applying Behavioral Design to Programs

by Vivien Caetano, Katy Davis, & Erin Sherman

It’s one thing to read about behavioral science or attend a one-time training on how it’s been used to improve programs. It’s another to take those insights and apply them to the real world yourself. That was the driver behind our Behavioral Design Project for Promoting Financial Health, in which 11 organizations actively learned behavioral […]

Richard Thaler Wins Nobel Prize in Economics

by DJ Neri & Evan Nesterak, The Behavioral Scientist

Richard Thaler, our long-time advisor (and a source of inspiration for our work), has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his pioneering work in applied behavioral economics. Below is an article about the impact of his contributions to the field that originally appeared on the Behavioral Scientist.  Richard Thaler, an economist at the University of […]

Learning Behavioral Design, Part 2: How to Embed Behavioral Design in Organizations

by ideas42

Over the last year and a half, we collaborated with 11 financial capability organizations to teach them how to apply behavioral insights to their programs. Each organization identified and tackled an initial problem impeding client financial health by leveraging their unique knowledge of the populations they serve. The reach of the Behavioral Design Project (BDP) […]

Got Behavioral Science Results? Help Us Build a Resource for All

by ideas42

It’s been more than three months since the launch of the Behavioral Evidence Hub, a community-driven collection of behavioral interventions proven to create impact. Jointly launched by Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), the University of Pennsylvania Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE), and ideas42, the B-Hub (as it’s affectionately called) has been visited […]

Keeping the Paths to Credit Open in Mexico

by Jaclyn Lefkowitz

What is the cost of making a late loan payment? If you’re like most people, you probably think of late fees. But there are also less visible, longer-term consequences that can have a serious impact on financial wellbeing. For example, late payments affect credit scores, which in turn can affect the ability to access credit […]

Runaway Trains of Thought: How Boosting Cognitive Bandwidth Can Fight Poverty

by Katy Davis & Colleen Briggs

This post originally appeared on NextBillion.  Imagine you just received the news that you have a serious but treatable medical condition. What would you think about? Perhaps you would fear for your health, or worry about what the treatment’s side effects might be. In a recent study, participants were asked what they would think about […]

The Feedback Card: Real-Time Budgeting for Real People

by Hyunsoo Chang & Will Tucker-Ray

Millions of Americans struggle to manage their complex finances, even with countless budgeting tools that exist to make the process easier. The myriad of features included in these kinds of tools can even add to the complexity, and they often don’t account for the limited time and attention that people experience in real life. That’s […]