IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp15287.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Financial Literacy Amongst Young People: When Does the Gender Gap Begin?

Author

Listed:
  • Preston, Alison

    (University of Western Australia)

  • Wright, Robert E.

    (University of Glasgow)

Abstract

Using micro-data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, and the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique, this paper contributes to knowledge on gender-gaps in financial literacy (FL) via a study of teenagers, emerging adults and young adults. The analysis suggests that important predictors of FL include schooling, high school-type, labour market activity and parental employment. There are large unexplained gaps, equal to 31.6%, 19.3% and 11.9% amongst those aged 15-19, 20-24 and 25-29, respectively. Very little of the gap may be explained by gender differences in human capital variables and other characteristics, including mathematics ability, cognitive ability and personality. The main conclusion is that the gap starts young and likely derives from gender stereotype beliefs.

Suggested Citation

  • Preston, Alison & Wright, Robert E., 2022. "Financial Literacy Amongst Young People: When Does the Gender Gap Begin?," IZA Discussion Papers 15287, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15287
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp15287.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    financial literacy; gender gap in financial literacy; gender stereotypes; adolescence; Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B54 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Feminist Economics
    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • I30 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General
    • J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies

    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:iza:izadps:dp15287. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.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.