Purpose: Youth development policy focuses on outcomes that have historically been perceived to impact the building blocks for youth in their life cycle. These building include education, health, and employment. Psychosocial outcomes have been peripheral to scientific inquiry in youth development until Bandura’s work which showed that psychological wellbeing is important in young people’s formative years. Recently, findings in youth savings show that savings positively influence future orientation which in turn impact educational outcomes for youth. Future orientation is the ability to think about and anticipate future events (McCabe & Barnett, 2000). This implies that savings owned by youth might cause youth to think and plan differently, and also project their successful possible selves in the future. If youth make these connections and perceive that what they do now will have an impact on what they become later, they will apply themselves in school differently, and have goals, aspirations and hopes that will change the way they behave. This has implication for youth policy. Policies that incorporate behavioral interventions might have better youth development outcomes due to the potential cognitive shift that will take place in the youth.

Method: Differences in the mean of future orientation measured pre and post in a youth savings treatment in a cluster randomized experiment in Ghana will be reported. Future orientation is a scale adapted from the School Success Profile with 12 items on a ten point Likert-scale measuring the perceptions of youth about how they see themselves in the future. Differences on the future orientation score will be reported between treatment and control. Furthermore, differences across amounts of savings on future orientation will be investigated.

Results:  At baseline male youth were more optimistic about the future compared to female youth (t=2.88, p<.01, male mean=8.97, female mean=9.07). Plans for tertiary education are associated with math scores (r=.06, p<.001) and English scores (r=.07, p<.001). Youth with higher educational advancement expectations perform significantly better on both their English and math scores (English mean difference = 7.07, Math mean difference = 6.38, p<.001). Youth also attend school more often when they expect to advance to higher education levels (F=7.95, p<.001). Mean differences on future orientation and expectations between pre and post savings treatment and low and high savers will be reported.

Conclusion: There is an association between future orientation and academic performance. Investigation into the impact of future orientation on savings and academic performance will further illuminate the causality of psychosocial wellbeing on youth development outcomes. If savings impact youth’s expectations and aspirations about higher education, then savings could be instrumental in changing how youth perform academically, because savings would provide resources needed for higher education. Policy implications for such results include interventions that pay attention to youth psychosocial factors, including curricular nuggets in the school program that will target young people’s envisioning their future and planning steps that will lead to the their future goals. Policy implications also include youth savings interventions that will facilitate youth to save for their futures.