Are We a Nation of Financial Illiterates?
…widespread financial illiteracy. If anything, financial illiteracy in other countries is worse than in the United States. Q: Was there ever a time when financial literacy was better taught in…
…widespread financial illiteracy. If anything, financial illiteracy in other countries is worse than in the United States. Q: Was there ever a time when financial literacy was better taught in…
What’s the connection between conversations about money and financial literacy? Could the taboo against talking about your salary be fading? And why did Angie’s teenage daughter call Vanguard to learn…
What’s the connection between conversations about money and financial literacy? Could the taboo against talking about your salary be fading? And why did Angie’s teenage daughter call Vanguard to learn…
Education is the surest solution to a lot of problems. Except when it’s not.
The bad news: Roughly 70 percent of Americans are financially illiterate. The good news: All the important stuff can fit on one index card. Here’s how to become your own…
The bad news: roughly 70 percent of Americans are financially illiterate. The good news: all the important stuff can fit on one index card. Here’s how to become your own…
Annamaria Lusardi has been researching financial literacy for years. She has co-authored a new working paper (abstract; PDF) with Tabea Bucher-Koenen, Rob Alessie, and Maarten van Rooij called “How Financially…
We blogged a while back about the sad state of financial literacy in this country. This has been diligently investigated by Annamaria Lusardi and Olivia S. Mitchell, who insert a…
…instrumental variables, we show that these estimates probably underestimate the effects of financial literacy on retirement planning. In sum, around the world, financial literacy is critical to retirement security. …
…of financial illiterates? This is a “mashupdate” of “Is America Ready for a “No-Lose Lottery”?,” “The “No-Lose Lottery,” Part 2,” and “What Do Hand-Washing and Financial Illiteracy Have in Common?”…
…second point: while financial literacy is perhaps more complicated than sexual literacy (or maybe not?), there are probably 10 basic concepts that fuel an understanding of nearly everything else to…
…be more skeptical about the consequences of climate change. Increased scientific literacy also leads to higher polarization on climate-change issues: The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments…
Annamaria Lusardi, one of the leading academic lights of financial literacy, has begun a new Financial Literacy Center “to develop and test innovative programs to improve financial literacy and promote…
…Literacy (NAAL), which measures the English literacy of adults across the United States. Prose literacy, defined in the study as the ability to “search, comprehend, and use information from continuous…
In our latest podcast, “What Do Hand-Washing and Financial Illiteracy Have in Common?” we talked about America’s financial literacy problem, a topic we’ve written about before. In the podcast, two…
This morning, my six-year-old son Solomon was having breakfast and watching his favorite TV show, Really Wild Animals. (It’s a great show, National Geographic cinematography with quippy narration by —…
Also: How can you become a more curious person?…
Also: how can we stop confusing correlation with causation?
…people discount future gains and losses), loss aversion (how much the valuation of losses outweigh gains of the same magnitude), financial literacy (understanding financial information and decisions) and debt literacy…
Also: how can we stop confusing correlation with causation?
For decades, G.D.P. has been the yardstick for measuring living standards around the world. Martha Nussbaum would rather use something that actually works.
Bill Frist was a transplant surgeon before serving in the Senate, where he drove controversial legislation on embryonic stem cells and end-of-life care. Did he change politics? Or did politics…
In the early 20th century, Max Weber argued that Protestantism created wealth. Finally, there are data to prove if he was right. All it took were some missionary experiments in…
Annamaria Lusardi, the doyenne of financial (il)literacy reseach (she has appeared on this blog and on Freakonomics Radio), is back with more depressing news. The Wall Street Journal summarizes: In…
In this special crossover episode, People I (Mostly) Admire host Steve Levitt admits to No Stupid Questions co-host Angela Duckworth that he knows almost nothing about psychology. But once Angela…
Reginald Dwayne Betts spent more than eight years in prison. Today he’s a Yale Law graduate, a MacArthur Fellow, and a poet. His nonprofit works to build libraries in prisons…
In our collective zeal to reform schools and close the achievement gap, we may have lost sight of where most learning really happens — at home.
She’s the author of the bestselling book Grit, and a University of Pennsylvania professor of psychology — a field Steve says he knows nothing about. But once Angela gives Steve…
A reader named Philip Serghini writes in: Great podcast about financial literacy and clean hands. I’ll try to refrain from sending hate mail to the attorney who espoused not teaching…