Document Type
Working Paper
Publication Date
Spring 4-7-2025
Abstract
Latino adults disproportionately experience financial stress, but no programs developed for Latinos comprehensively and successfully integrate financial capability and stress management approaches to address financial stress. Using a community-partnered approach, we enhanced a digital financial capability intervention with theoretically- and empirically-grounded stress management techniques. We tested whether this integrative intervention improved financial capability, self-efficacy, actions, and stress as well as sleep, a correlate of stress. A sample of 76 Latino adults (39 in the intervention group, 37 in the control group; mean age = 45, 76% female, 88% with household income below $59,999) completed the three-month randomized waitlist-control trial. Participants completed questionnaires regarding financial capability, self-efficacy, actions, stress, sleep, and usefulness of the intervention. Intent to treat difference-in-difference (DID) analyses controlling for individual characteristics demonstrated that those exposed to the intervention, in comparison to the control group, reported greater increases in financial capability and greater decreases in financial stress from baseline to immediate post-intervention, b = 0.89 (.42) and b = -0.48 (.20), ps < .05. There were no significant differences in financial self-efficacy and sleep changes. Participants found the intervention useful and novel. An integrative digital financial capability and stress management intervention improved financial capability, actions related to financial decisions, and financial stress. Future research should involve longer term follow up to assess whether stress improvements later translate into improvements in sleep and biomarkers of stress and health. This intervention can then be used to improve financial behaviors and financial stress and health within the Latino community.
Recommended Citation
Blanco, Luisa; Joseph, Nataria; Richards, McKenzie; and Sedrakyan, Flora, "Dollars and Zen: A Randomized Control Trial of a Community-Partnered Financial Capability and Stress Management Digital Intervention among Low-Income Latino Adults" (2025). Pepperdine University, School of Public Policy Working Papers. Paper 86.
https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/sppworkingpapers/86
Comments
April 7, 2025. This paper has not been peer reviewed.