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Children’s Savings Account Programs: Measuring Program Performance and Outcomes

Children’s Savings Account (CSA) programs provide children and families with long-term savings or investment accounts and incentives to save for postsecondary education. CSA programs are structured in different ways including their reach, sources of funding, and other features. Given this diversity, programs have different goals and opportunities around how they collect data to track their performance and evaluate participant outcomes. With input from CSA program leaders, researchers, and funders, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau explored how the field might take a more coordinated approach to program design and evaluation.

The results of this work are published here as two guides intended to be read in the following sequence. The first, “Design and Evaluation Principles for Children’s Savings Account Programs,” presents key design considerations for CSA programs and provides guidance on selecting the best performance indicators for a given program and monitoring progress toward goals. The second, “Common Metrics for Children’s Savings Account Programs,” proposes a set of standard measures. Organizations can then select measures aligned to the specific CSA program goals from the “menu” of options.

Design and evaluation principles for Children’s Savings Account Programs

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Common metrics for Children’s Savings Account Programs

Read the guide