The impact of strategies on young children’s saving for the future

Abstract

The ability to save resources for future use, or saving, begins to emerge around 3 years of age, but children show low rates of saving during the preschool years. Thus, several strategies have been used to improve preschoolers’ saving, such as providing a prompt, budgeting, increasing psychological distance, and simulating the future. The current study investigated (a) the development of saving in early childhood, (b) the impact of several saving strategies on children’s saving (i.e., budgeting, tracking expenses, and psychological distance), and (c) whether the effectiveness of the strategies changed with age. Here, 3- to 5-year-old Canadian children (N = 254) completed the Saving Board Game, and their parents completed the saving subscale of the Children’s Future Thinking Questionnaire. In the Saving Board Game, children were randomly assigned to one of the five strategies: (a) control, (b) budgeting, (c) tracking, (d) adult perspective, or (e) child perspective. An analysis of covariance with age, strategy, and response option order (as a covariate) showed a main effect of age, with 5-year-olds saving more than 3-year-olds. There was no effect of strategy or an interaction between strategy and age on children’s token saving. Parent-reported child saving was positively correlated with children’s Saving Board Game performance only in the control condition. We consider why these strategies failed to increase children’s saving.