Do Children’s Savings Accounts Work?

That’s the question that the Saving for Education, Entrepreneurship, and Downpayment Initiative, or SEED Initiative set out to answer. SEED is a 10-year research project which tested matched savings accounts and financial education for children and youth. The project opened Child Development Accounts (CDAs) for 1,171 children at 12 nonprofit, community-based organizations across the country, at-birth, in order to provide more stable and productive lives for those children and their families.

In many ways, SEED is a real-life experiment to see if the ASPIRE Act would or could be a success. While it isn’t fully accurate to draw direct parallels (there are significant benefits to universality that could never be realized by SEED,) there are many lessons that we and other interested parties hoped to draw from the SEED experience. Next week, for the first time, we get an opportunity to look at the broad based conclusions of the experience as “Lessons From SEED” is released.

This new report, prepared by SEED’s National Partners–the Center for Social Development at Washington University (CSD), the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED), the Initiative on Financial Security at the Aspen Institute, the New America Foundation, the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare, and RTI International.

The report will be released at a public event next Tuesday, September 21st, from 8:30 to 10 AM at the National Press Club. Featured speakers will include Jose Cisneros, Treasurer of the City and County of San Francisco (a key figure in SF’s Kindergarten to College program), Michael Sherraden of CSD, Lisa Mensah from the Aspen Institute, our Ray Boshara and Bob Friedman from CFED.

Click here to join us.