Sanjay Agarwal

International practices to promote budget literacy : key findings and lessons learned

A budget is a vital document that lays out a government’s economic priorities in terms of policies and programs. The World Bank team’s preliminary scrutiny of practices aimed at promoting budget literacy revealed that, unlike financial literacy and citizenship education, concerted approaches to mainstream budget-literacy education at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of schooling are limited. Despite the dearth of literature on this topic, there has been no systematic attempt to compile standalone practices for advancing budget literacy that have been adopted by countries. This review seeks to fill this gap by taking stock of illustrative initiatives promoting budget literacy in selected countries. The presented findings and lessons seek to inform the efforts of practitioners, including policy makers, educational specialists, curriculum experts, fiscal transparency advocates, and civil society organizations interested in improving education or civic engagement and accountability in budget processes. This book presents 35 case studies from 34 countries on the basis of a stock-taking exercise of practices promoting budget literacy. A broad range of curricular content, pedagogical approaches, and learning outcomes for budget literacy are documented. Twenty-seven of the case studies focus on school-based initiatives, and eight on beyond school initiatives.