IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joepsy/v61y2017icp191-202.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gender differences in financial risk tolerance

Author

Listed:
  • Fisher, Patti J.
  • Yao, Rui

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to explore gender differences in financial risk tolerance using a large, nationally representative dataset, the Survey of Consumer Finances. The impact of the explanatory variables in the model is allowed to differ between men and women to decompose gender differences in financial risk tolerance. The results indicate that gender differences in financial risk tolerance are explained by gender differences in the individual determinants of financial risk tolerance, and that the disparity does not result from gender in and of itself. The individual variables that moderate the relationship between gender and high risk tolerance are income uncertainty and net worth, with income uncertainty moderating the relationship between gender and some risk tolerance. Financial fiduciaries should understand the differences in income uncertainty and net worth between men and women and how those differences relate to risk tolerance.

Suggested Citation

  • Fisher, Patti J. & Yao, Rui, 2017. "Gender differences in financial risk tolerance," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 191-202.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:61:y:2017:i:c:p:191-202
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2017.03.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487016303361
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joep.2017.03.006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yao, Rui & Sharpe, Deanna L. & Wang, Feifei, 2011. "Decomposing the age effect on risk tolerance," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 879-887.
    2. Sachse, Katharina & Jungermann, Helmut & Belting, Julia M., 2012. "Investment risk – The perspective of individual investors," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 437-447.
    3. Courtney Coile & Kevin Milligan, 2009. "How Household Portfolios Evolve After Retirement: The Effect Of Aging And Health Shocks," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(2), pages 226-248, June.
    4. Yogo, Motohiro, 2016. "Portfolio choice in retirement: Health risk and the demand for annuities, housing, and risky assets," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 17-34.
    5. Annamaria Lusardi & Olivia S Mitchelli, 2007. "Financial Literacy and Retirement Preparedness: Evidence and Implications for Financial Education," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 42(1), pages 35-44, January.
    6. repec:uts:ppaper:v:10:y:2007:i:3:p:17-24 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Gutter, Michael S. & Fox, Jonathan J. & Montalto, Catherine P., 1999. "Racial differences in investor decision making," Financial Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 149-162.
    8. David A. Love & Paul A. Smith, 2010. "Does health affect portfolio choice?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(12), pages 1441-1460, December.
    9. Jianakoplos, Nancy Ammon & Bernasek, Alexandra, 1998. "Are Women More Risk Averse?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 36(4), pages 620-630, October.
    10. Ho, Kwok & Milevsky, Moshe Arye & Robinson, Chris, 1994. "Asset allocation, life expectancy and shortfall," Financial Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 109-126.
    11. Stefan Hochguertel, 2003. "Precautionary motives and portfolio decisions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 61-77.
    12. Rosen, H.S.Harvey S. & Wu, Stephen, 2004. "Portfolio choice and health status," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(3), pages 457-484, June.
    13. Urvi Neelakantan, 2010. "Estimation And Impact Of Gender Differences In Risk Tolerance," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 48(1), pages 228-233, January.
    14. Annamaria Lusardi & Olivia Mitchell, 2006. "Financial Literacy and Retirement Preparedness: Evidence and Implications for Financial Education Programs," Working Papers wp144, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    15. Robert Faff & Terrence Hallahan & Michael McKenzie, 2009. "Nonlinear linkages between financial risk tolerance and demographic characteristics," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(13), pages 1329-1332.
    16. Brad M. Barber & Terrance Odean, 2001. "Boys will be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 261-292.
    17. McInish, Thomas H., 1982. "Individual investors and risk-taking," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 125-136, June.
    18. Lemaster, Philip & Strough, JoNell, 2014. "Beyond Mars and Venus: Understanding gender differences in financial risk tolerance," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 148-160.
    19. Ryan Gibson & David Michayluk & Gerhard Van de Venter, 2013. "Financial risk tolerance: An analysis of unexplored factors," Published Paper Series 2013-1, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.
    20. Gandelman, Néstor & Hernández-Murillo, Rubén, 2013. "What do happiness and health satisfaction data tell us about relative risk aversion?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 301-312.
    21. Clifford B. Hawley & Edwin T. Fujii, 1993. "An Empirical Analysis of Preferences for Financial Risk: Further Evidence on the Friedman–Savage Model," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(2), pages 197-204, December.
    22. Fan, Elliott & Zhao, Ruoyun, 2009. "Health status and portfolio choice: Causality or heterogeneity?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 1079-1088, June.
    23. Dwyer, Peggy D. & Gilkeson, James H. & List, John A., 2002. "Gender differences in revealed risk taking: evidence from mutual fund investors," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 151-158, July.
    24. Levy, Moshe, 2015. "An evolutionary explanation for risk aversion," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 51-61.
    25. Edwards, Ryan D, 2008. "Health Risk and Portfolio Choice," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 26, pages 472-485.
    26. Kathleen Arano & Carl Parker & Rory Terry, 2010. "Gender‐Based Risk Aversion And Retirement Asset Allocation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 48(1), pages 147-155, January.
    27. Robert B. Barsky & F. Thomas Juster & Miles S. Kimball & Matthew D. Shapiro, 1997. "Preference Parameters and Behavioral Heterogeneity: An Experimental Approach in the Health and Retirement Study," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 537-579.
    28. Raquel Fonseca & Kathleen J. Mullen & Gema Zamarro & Julie Zissimopoulos, 2012. "What Explains the Gender Gap in Financial Literacy? The Role of Household Decision Making," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(1), pages 90-106, March.
    29. Sunden, Annika E & Surette, Brian J, 1998. "Gender Differences in the Allocation of Assets in Retirement Savings Plans," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(2), pages 207-211, May.
    30. Palsson, Anne-Marie, 1996. "Does the degree of relative risk aversion vary with household characteristics?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 17(6), pages 771-787, December.
    31. Robert Faff & Daniel Mulino & Daniel Chai, 2008. "On The Linkage Between Financial Risk Tolerance And Risk Aversion," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 31(1), pages 1-23, March.
    32. Alexandra Bernasek & Stephanie Shwiff, 2001. "Gender, Risk, and Retirement," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(2), pages 345-356, June.
    33. David Michayluk & Gerhard Van de Venter, 2007. "Subjectivity in Judgments: Further Evidence from the Financial Planning Industry," Published Paper Series 2007-3, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.
    34. Hariharan, Govind & Chapman, Kenneth S. & Domian, Dale L., 2000. "Risk tolerance and asset allocation for investors nearing retirement," Financial Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 159-170, 00.
    35. Morin, Roger A & Fernandez Suarez, Antonio, 1983. "Risk Aversion Revisited," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 38(4), pages 1201-1216, September.
    36. Elke U. Weber & Richard A. Milliman, 1997. "Perceived Risk Attitudes: Relating Risk Perception to Risky Choice," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(2), pages 123-144, February.
    37. Van de Venter, Gerhard & Michayluk, David & Davey, Geoff, 2012. "A longitudinal study of financial risk tolerance," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 794-800.
    38. Brown, Sarah & Dietrich, Michael & Ortiz-Nuñez, Aurora & Taylor, Karl, 2011. "Self-employment and attitudes towards risk: Timing and unobserved heterogeneity," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 425-433, June.
    39. Bucciol, Alessandro & Zarri, Luca, 2015. "The shadow of the past: Financial risk taking and negative life events," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 1-16.
    40. Elke U. Weber & Christopher Hsee, 1998. "Cross-Cultural Differences in Risk Perception, but Cross-Cultural Similarities in Attitudes Towards Perceived Risk," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(9), pages 1205-1217, September.
    41. Paul J. H. Schoemaker, 1990. "Are Risk-Attitudes Related Across Domains and Response Modes?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(12), pages 1451-1463, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sandip Chattopadhyay & Ranjan Dasgupta, 2015. "Demographic and Socioeconomic Impact on Risk Attitudes of the Indian Investors - An Empirical Study," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 5(4), pages 601-623.
    2. Sultan Saqar Oqaidan Alwahaibi, 2019. "Is Demographic Information Influence Risk Tolerance/Aversion in Investment Decision? Evidences from Literature Review," International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, Human Resource Management Academic Research Society, International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, vol. 9(1), pages 111-122, January.
    3. Sandip Chattopadhyay & Ranjan Dasgupta, 2015. "Demographic and Socioeconomic Impact on Risk Attitudes of the Indian Investors - An Empirical Study," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 5(4), pages 601-623, April.
    4. Katarzyna Kochaniak & Paweł Ulman, 2020. "Risk-Intolerant but Risk-Taking—Towards a Better Understanding of Inconsistent Survey Responses of the Euro Area Households," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-26, August.
    5. Fang, Ming & Li, Haiyang & Wang, Qin, 2021. "Risk tolerance and household wealth--Evidence from Chinese households," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 885-895.
    6. Dana Goldman & Nicole Maestas, 2013. "Medical Expenditure Risk And Household Portfolio Choice," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(4), pages 527-550, June.
    7. Tânia Saraiva & Tiago Cruz Gonçalves, 2022. "Should I Play or Should I Go? Individuals’ Characteristics and Preference for Uncertainty," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-14, April.
    8. Vicki L. Bogan & Angela R. Fertig, 2018. "Mental health and retirement savings: Confounding issues with compounding interest," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(2), pages 404-425, February.
    9. Kaustia, Markku & Conlin, Andrew & Luotonen, Niilo, 2023. "What drives stock market participation? The role of institutional, traditional, and behavioral factors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    10. Charles Godfred Ackah & Enoch Randy Aikins & Thomas Twene Sarpong & Derek Asuman, 2019. "Gender Differences In Attitudes Toward Risk: Evidence From Entreprenuers In Ghana And Uganda," Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship (JDE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 24(01), pages 1-19, March.
    11. David A. Love & Paul A. Smith, 2010. "Does health affect portfolio choice?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(12), pages 1441-1460, December.
    12. Julien Hugonnier & Florian Pelgrin, 2013. "Health and (Other) Asset Holdings," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(2), pages 663-710.
    13. Jarkko Peltomäki & Jukka Sihvonen & Steve Swidler & Sami Vähämaa, 2021. "Age, gender, and risk‐taking: Evidence from the S&P 1500 executives and market‐based measures of firm risk," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(9-10), pages 1988-2014, October.
    14. Ariane Agunsoye & Jerome Monne & Janette Rutterford & Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos, 2022. "How gender, marital status, and gender norms affect savings goals," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 75(2), pages 157-183, May.
    15. Lawrence, Edward R. & Nguyen, Thanh D. & Wick, Benedikt, 2024. "Gender difference in overconfidence and household financial literacy," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    16. Kate Rybczynski, 2015. "Gender differences in portfolio risk across birth cohort and marital status," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(1), pages 28-63, February.
    17. Sara Jonsson & Inga-Lill Söderberg, 2018. "Investigating explanatory theories on laypeople’s risk perception of personal economic collapse in a bank crisis – the Cyprus case," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(6), pages 763-779, June.
    18. Zaheer Ahmed & Umara Noreen & Suresh A.L. Ramakrishnan & Dewi Fariha Binti Abdullah, 2021. "What explains the investment decision-making behaviour? The role of financial literacy and financial risk tolerance," Afro-Asian Journal of Finance and Accounting, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 11(1), pages 1-19.
    19. Selima Ben Mansour & Elyès Jouini & Jean-Michel Marin & Clotilde Napp & Christian Robert, 2008. "Are risk-averse agents more optimistic? A Bayesian estimation approach," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(6), pages 843-860.
    20. Heenkenda, Shirantha, 2014. "Determination of Financial Risk Tolerance among Different Household Sectors in Sri Lanka," MPRA Paper 67324, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Risk tolerance; Gender differences; Household behavior; Personal finance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:61:y:2017:i:c:p:191-202. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.