The relationship among gender, interest in financial topics and understanding of personal finance eBook

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In some studies on young adults’ knowledge and understanding of personal finance, males have outperformed females. In this paper, we investigate whether interest in financial and economic topics and media usage mediate the relationship between gender and knowledge and understanding of personal finance in three content areas: banking, insurance, everyday money management. We administered the German adaptation of the Test of Financial Literacy (TFL-G), developed by the American Council for Economic Education, to assess young adults’ knowledge and understanding of personal finance. Although we found that male participants performed better on the TFL-G, we also identified significant gender-specific differences in young adults’ interest in financial and economic topics and media usage. When controlling for interest in financial and economic topics and media usage, the gender-specific gap in performance on the TFL-G decreased. These influencing factors accounted for 13 % to 26 % of the variance in the TFL-G scores in the three content areas under investigation. Hence, when investigating the gender gap in knowledge and understanding of personal finance, greater consideration should be given to contextual variables. Further, differences in test scores should be investigated according to separate content areas.