Gender, country-level variables, and financial knowledge eBook

Inhalt

A gender gap in the financial knowledge of high school students has appeared over time in a variety of different countries, whereby male students tend to have more financial knowledge than female students (Atkinson & Messy, 2012; Lusardi, Mitchell & Curto, 2010). Previous research has attempted to explain this gender gap by exploring links between country-level variables and financial knowledge (Atkinson & Messy, 2012; Jappelli, 2010; Lo Prete, 2013). We built upon previous research by using data from the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) Financial Literacy Assessment and focusing on the potential influence that a country’s macroeconomic indicators may have on individual student financial knowledge and the gender gap in financial knowledge. We utilized multilevel modeling procedures to best account for the variance in student performance and find that country-level variables do not seem to explain the gender gap in financial knowledge.