Lusardi Mitchell Curto (2010) - Financial Literacy Among The Young

• This page is referenced in The NBER Entrepreneurship Research Boot Camp Page

Reference(s)

• Lusardi, Annamaria, Olivia Mitchell and Vilsa Curto (2010), "Financial Literacy among the Young", Journal of Consumer Affairs, Special Issue on Financial Literacy, 44, pp. 358-380. pdf

Abstract

We examined financial literacy among the young using the most recent wave of the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We showed that financial literacy is low; fewer than one-third of young adults possess basic knowledge of interest rates, inflation and risk diversification. Financial literacy was strongly related to sociodemographic characteristics and family financial sophistication. Specifically, a collegeeducated male whose parents had stocks and retirement savings was about 45 percentage points more likely to know about risk diversification than a female with less than a high school education whose parents were not wealthy.