IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/26411.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Financial wellbeing and some problems in assessing its link to financial education

Author

Listed:
  • Tatom, John

Abstract

In 2009, the National Endowment for Financial Education initiated a project to study the “Implications of a Quarter Century Research in Personal Finance.” As part of that effort, one of the major themes chosen was to study the measurement and evaluation of participant outcomes. This paper is part of the investigation of measurement and evaluation. It focuses more on what the macro-measures of financial wellbeing are that financial education is aimed at improving and the extent to which these larger scale measures can be improved by financial education, as well as obstacles to good evaluations and limitations of correlation outcomes. The case for improving financial education rests upon (1) the hypothesis that financial education can improve financial wellbeing, (2) the documented low state of financial literacy and individual satisfaction with their financial knowledge, behavior and financial outcomes of consumer decision making, and finally (3) the stress that recent financial shocks have put on household wellbeing. This article also reviews some of those recent changes and the initial recovery from the most recent shock to wellbeing. Section I reviews macro measures of wellbeing and the principal measures and approaches of most studies of the effects of financial education programs. Section II reviews the extent of two major shocks to household net worth in the past decade, some of the potential stress for households this created and the implications for the importance of financial education. Section III reviews some of the principal obstacles to effective assessment and the difficulties with reliance on simple correlations of financial programs and outcomes for such assessments.

Suggested Citation

  • Tatom, John, 2010. "Financial wellbeing and some problems in assessing its link to financial education," MPRA Paper 26411, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:26411
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/26411/1/MPRA_paper_26411.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bernheim, B. Douglas & Garrett, Daniel M. & Maki, Dean M., 2001. "Education and saving:: The long-term effects of high school financial curriculum mandates," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 435-465, June.
    2. Annamaria Lusardi, 2006. "Financial Literacy and Financial Education: Review and Policy Implications," NFI Policy Briefs 2006-PB-11, Indiana State University, Scott College of Business, Networks Financial Institute.
    3. John P. Caskey, 2006. "Can Personal Financial Management Education Promote Asset Accumulation by the Poor?," NFI Policy Briefs 2006-PB-06, Indiana State University, Scott College of Business, Networks Financial Institute.
    4. Meier, Stephan & Sprenger, Charles D., 2013. "Discounting financial literacy: Time preferences and participation in financial education programs," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 159-174.
    5. John Karl Scholz & Ananth Seshadri, 2008. "Are All Americans Saving ‘Optimally’ for Retirement?," Working Papers wp189, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    6. Kevin Hoover & Mark Siegler, 2008. "Sound and fury: McCloskey and significance testing in economics," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(1), pages 1-37.
    7. Bernheim, B. Douglas & Garrett, Daniel M., 2003. "The effects of financial education in the workplace: evidence from a survey of households," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(7-8), pages 1487-1519, August.
    8. McCloskey, Donald N, 1983. "The Rhetoric of Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 481-517, June.
    9. Robert I. Lerman & Elizabeth Bell, 2006. "Financial Literacy Strategies: Where Do We Go From Here?," NFI Policy Briefs 2006-PB-10, Indiana State University, Scott College of Business, Networks Financial Institute.
    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. Azra Zaimovic & Anes Torlakovic & Almira Arnaut-Berilo & Tarik Zaimovic & Lejla Dedovic & Minela Nuhic Meskovic, 2023. "Mapping Financial Literacy: A Systematic Literature Review of Determinants and Recent Trends," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(12), pages 1-30, June.
    2. van Rooij, Maarten C.J. & Lusardi, Annamaria & Alessie, Rob J.M., 2011. "Financial literacy and retirement planning in the Netherlands," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 593-608, August.
    3. Lusardi, Annamaria & Samek, Anya & Kapteyn, Arie & Glinert, Lewis & Hung, Angela & Heinberg, Aileen, 2017. "Visual tools and narratives: new ways to improve financial literacy," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(3), pages 297-323, July.
    4. Eurico J. Ferreira & Concetta A. DePaolo & Harry Edward Gallatin, 2011. "Assessing Finance Literacy Teaching at Indiana State University," NFI Working Papers 2011-WP-24, Indiana State University, Scott College of Business, Networks Financial Institute.
    5. Maarten C.J. van Rooij & Annamaria Lusardi & Rob J.M. Alessie, 2012. "Financial Literacy, Retirement Planning and Household Wealth," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(560), pages 449-478, May.
    6. Aileen Heinberg & Angela Hung & Arie Kapteyn & Annamaria Lusardi & Anya Savikhin Samek & Joanne Yoong, 2014. "Five steps to planning success: experimental evidence from US households," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 30(4), pages 697-724.
    7. Lusardi, Annamaria & Kaiser, Tim, 2024. "Financial literacy and financial education: An overview," CEPR Discussion Papers 19185, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Grohmann, Antonia & Kouwenberg, Roy & Menkhoff, Lukas, 2014. "Roots of Financial Literacy," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100550, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    9. Marianne Bertrand & Adair Morse, 2011. "Information Disclosure, Cognitive Biases, and Payday Borrowing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(6), pages 1865-1893, December.
    10. 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.
    11. Avner Ben-Ner & John List & Louis Putterman & Anya Samek, 2015. "Learned Generosity? A Field Experiment with Parents and Their Children," Artefactual Field Experiments 00434, The Field Experiments Website.
    12. Kannyiri Thadious Banyen & Joseph Kofi Nkuah, 2015. "Limited Stock Market Participation in Ghana: A Behavioral Explanation," International Journal of Economics and Empirical Research (IJEER), The Economics and Social Development Organization (TESDO), vol. 3(6), pages 286-305, June.
    13. Grohmann, Antonia & Kouwenberg, Roy & Menkhoff, Lukas, 2014. "Financial literacy and its consequences in the emerging middleclass," Kiel Working Papers 1943, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    14. 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.
    15. Goda, Gopi Shah & Levy, Matthew R. & Flaherty Manchester, Colleen & Sojourner, Aaron & Tasoff, Joshua & Xiao, Jiusi, 2023. "Are retirement planning tools substitutes or complements to financial capability?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 561-573.
    16. Meier, Stephan & Sprenger, Charles D., 2013. "Discounting financial literacy: Time preferences and participation in financial education programs," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 159-174.
    17. Lusardi, Annamaria & Mitchell, Olivia S., 2007. "Financial literacy and retirement planning: New evidence from the Rand American Life Panel," CFS Working Paper Series 2007/33, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    18. 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.
    19. Gary V. Engelhardt & Anil Kumar, 2007. "Employer Matching and 401(k) Saving: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study," NBER Chapters, in: Public Policy and Retirement, Trans-Atlantic Public Economics Seminar (TAPES), pages 1920-1943, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Grohmann, Antonia, 2018. "Financial literacy and financial behavior: Evidence from the emerging Asian middle class," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 129-143.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Financial wellbeing; financial education; educational assessment.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A20 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - General
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • G00 - Financial Economics - - General - - - General

    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:pra:mprapa:26411. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.