IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/28125.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Stability and Predictive Power of Financial Literacy: Evidence from Longitudinal Data

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Angrisani
  • Jeremy Burke
  • Annamaria Lusardi
  • Gary Mottola

Abstract

We administered the FINRA Foundation’s National Financial Capability Study questionnaire to members of the RAND American Life Panel (ALP) in 2012 and 2018. Using this unique, longitudinal data set, we investigate the evolution of financial literacy over time and shed light on the causal effect of financial knowledge on financial outcomes. Over a six-year observation period, financial literacy appears to be rather stable, with a slight tendency to decline at older ages. Moreover and importantly, financial literacy has significant predictive power for future financial outcomes, even after controlling for baseline outcomes and a wide set of demographics and individual characteristics that influence financial decision making. This estimated relationship is significantly stronger for older individuals, for women, and for those with lower income than for their counterparts in the study. Altogether, our findings suggest that differences in the stock of financial knowledge may lead to increasing inequality over the life course.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Angrisani & Jeremy Burke & Annamaria Lusardi & Gary Mottola, 2020. "The Stability and Predictive Power of Financial Literacy: Evidence from Longitudinal Data," NBER Working Papers 28125, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28125
    Note: AG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w28125.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Annamaria Lusardi & Olivia S. Mitchell, 2014. "The Economic Importance of Financial Literacy: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(1), pages 5-44, March.
    2. John Ameriks & Andrew Caplin & John Leahy, 2003. "Wealth Accumulation and the Propensity to Plan," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 1007-1047.
    3. Justine S. Hastings & Brigitte C. Madrian & William L. Skimmyhorn, 2013. "Financial Literacy, Financial Education, and Economic Outcomes," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 5(1), pages 347-373, May.
    4. Angrisani, Marco & Lee, Jinkook, 2019. "Cognitive decline and household financial decisions at older ages," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 13(C), pages 86-101.
    5. Maximilian D. Schmeiser & Jason S. Seligman, 2013. "Using the Right Yardstick: Assessing Financial Literacy Measures by Way of Financial Well-Being," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(2), pages 243-262, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Swensen, Isaac D. & Urban, Carly, 2023. "Literature Review on the Effect of Physical and Mental Health on Financial Well-Being," IZA Policy Papers 198, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Kai Ruggeri & Amma Panin & Milica Vdovic & Bojana Većkalov & Nazeer Abdul-Salaam & Jascha Achterberg & Carla Akil & Jolly Amatya & Kanchan Amatya & Thomas Lind Andersen & Sibele D. Aquino & Arjoon Aru, 2022. "The globalizability of temporal discounting," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(10), pages 1386-1397, October.
      • Kai Ruggeri & Amma Panin & Milica Vdovic & Bojana Većkalov & Nazeer Abdul-Salaam & Jascha Achterberg & Carla Akil & Jolly Amatya & Kanchan Amatya & Thomas Lind Andersen & Sibele D Aquino & Arjoon Arun, 2022. "The globalizability of temporal discounting," Post-Print halshs-03903193, HAL.
    3. Tabea Bucher-Koenen & Rob J. Alessie & Annamaria Lusardi & Maarten van Rooij, 2021. "Fearless Woman: Financial Literacy and Stock Market Participation," NBER Working Papers 28723, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Kai Ruggeri & Amma Panin & Milica Vdovic & Bojana Većkalov & Nazeer Abdul-Salaam & Jascha Achterberg & Carla Akil & Jolly Amatya & Kanchan Amatya & Thomas Lind Andersen & Sibele D. Aquino & Arjoon Aru, 2022. "The globalizability of temporal discounting," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(10), pages 1386-1397, October.
    5. Carolyn St Aubyn, 2022. "Consumer choices with wealth preferences and separation of consumption and payment," BCAM Working Papers 2201, Birkbeck Centre for Applied Macroeconomics.
    6. Blanco, Luisa R. & Hernandez, Isaias & Thames, April D. & Chen, Lucia & Serido, Joyce, 2023. "Mind your money: A community-based digital intervention for improving financial capability among Hispanics," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 629-643.

    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. Francisco J. Oliver-Márquez & Almudena Guarnido-Rueda & Ignacio Amate-Fortes, 2021. "Measuring financial knowledge: a macroeconomic perspective," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 177-222, February.
    2. Luc Arrondel, 2018. "Financial Literacy and Asset Behaviour: Poor Education and Zero for Conduct?," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 60(1), pages 144-160, March.
    3. Anderson, Anders & Baker, Forest & Robinson, David T., 2017. "Precautionary savings, retirement planning and misperceptions of financial literacy," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 383-398.
    4. Jason Kasozi & Daniel Makina, 2021. "Analysis of financial literacy and its effects on financial inclusion in Uganda," International Journal of Finance & Banking Studies, Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 10(3), pages 67-83, July.
    5. Daniel Fernandes & John G. Lynch & Richard G. Netemeyer, 2014. "Financial Literacy, Financial Education, and Downstream Financial Behaviors," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(8), pages 1861-1883, August.
    6. Anders Anderson & David T Robinson, 2022. "Financial Literacy in the Age of Green Investment [Evaluating behaviorally motivated policy: experimental evidence from the lightbulb market]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 26(6), pages 1551-1584.
    7. Maya Haran Rosen & Orly Sade, 2017. "Does Financial Regulation Unintentionally Ignore Less Privileged Populations? The Investigation of a Regulatory Fintech Advancement, Objective and Subjective Financial Literacy," Bank of Israel Working Papers 2017.10, Bank of Israel.
    8. Baulkaran, Vishaal, 2022. "Personal bankruptcy and consumer credit delinquency: The case of personal finance education," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    9. M. M. Naeser Seldal & Ellen K. Nyhus, 2022. "Financial Vulnerability, Financial Literacy, and the Use of Digital Payment Technologies," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 45(2), pages 281-306, June.
    10. Insoo Cho & Peter F. Orazem, 2021. "How endogenous risk preferences and sample selection affect analysis of firm survival," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 56(4), pages 1309-1332, April.
    11. Margaret Miller & Julia Reichelstein & Christian Salas & Bilal Zia, 2015. "Can You Help Someone Become Financially Capable? A Meta-Analysis of the Literature," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 30(2), pages 220-246.
    12. Angelici, Marta & Del Boca, Daniela & Oggero, Noemi & Profeta, Paola & Rossi, Maria Cristina & Villosio, Claudia, 2022. "Pension information and women’s awareness," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 23(C).
    13. Elsa Fornero, 2015. "Economic-financial Literacy and (Sustainable) Pension Reforms: Why the Former is a Key Ingredient for the Latter," Bankers, Markets & Investors, ESKA Publishing, issue 134, pages 6-16, January-F.
    14. Sandro Ambuehl & B. Douglas Bernheim & Annamaria Lusardi, 2022. "Evaluating Deliberative Competence: A Simple Method with an Application to Financial Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(11), pages 3584-3626, November.
    15. Mequanint B. Melesse & Amos Nyangira Tirra & Yabibal M. Walle & Michael Hauser, 2023. "Understanding the Determinants of Aspirations in Rural Tanzania: Does Financial Literacy Matter?," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 35(6), pages 1294-1321, December.
    16. Garber, Gabriel & Mian, Atif & Ponticelli, Jacopo & Sufi, Amir, 2024. "Consumption smoothing or consumption binging? The effects of government-led consumer credit expansion in Brazil," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    17. William L. Skimmyhorn, 2016. "Comparing Military and Civilian Household Finances: Descriptive Evidence from Recent Surveys," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 471-483, July.
    18. repec:diw:diwwpp:dp1702 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Marcin Kawiński & Piotr Majewski, 2017. "Financial and insurance literacy in Poland," Working Papers 2017-03, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    20. Marco Nieddu & Lorenzo Pandolfi, 2018. "Cutting Through the Fog: Financial Literacy and the Subjective Value of Financial Assets," CSEF Working Papers 497, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    21. Luigi Guiso & Eliana Viviano, 2015. "How Much Can Financial Literacy Help?," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 19(4), pages 1347-1382.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • G51 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance - - - Household Savings, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth
    • G53 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance - - - Financial Literacy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:28125. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.