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Financial Education and Equality
Abstract
Financial education is a lifelong process that encompasses the acquisition of knowledge and the development of skills; it broadens abilities that enable effective decisions made throughout important conjunctions of life. Financial education for young children can reduce future social and economic gaps because it assists in making better financial decisions. This research examines the relationships between financial education and the consumption-culture of young children learning in primary schools in Israel (studying in the second, third, and fourth grades); they were classified as either technological or traditional learners. To this end, a special questionnaire designed to examine consumption-culture, consisting of six categories (each category comprises 4–5 questions, with a total of 28 questions), was developed. The validity and reliability of this questionnaire are high (.95 and .9, respectively). This questionnaire was answered by 178 children enrolled in 3 different schools, of which two are located at the geographical periphery and one is located at the center of Israel. In one of these schools, 86 children studied financial education for 1 year (2014/15) and answered the same questionnaire at the end of the year. The questionnaires were analyzed using ANOVA and regression analyses. The findings revealed that students classified more as digital learners have better consumption habits compared with their counterparts classified as more traditional learners. Undergoing financial education strengthens this link. Furthermore, undergoing financial education at the lower grades of primary school improves the consumption habits of young children compared with students not attending financial education classes. Policy implications suggest that increasing students’ exposure to financial education at a young age might improve the consumption-culture of young people. This in turn might lead toward narrowing the social and economic gap in the future.
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The scholarly attention paid to children’s commercial lives and the consumer culture of childhood in recent years belies some of the slippages and disjunctions that remain between the fields of childhood studies and consumer studies. On the one hand, as I have argued elsewhere (Cook 2004b, 2008), those writing in and for a specifically “childhood studies” audience tend to ignore or marginalize the material and commercial aspects of children’s existence, with some notable exceptions (e.g. Zelizer 2002; Marsh 2005). This indifference occurs perhaps because the hallmark of childhood studies — the active, agentive child — is also central to marketers’, advertisers’ and retailers’ constructions of the child consumer. This coincidence of similarly imagined children does not fit well with the liberatory posture and agenda of many in childhood studies: the knowing, meaning-making child resembles rather too closely the marketer’s dream. On the other hand, a good deal of mainstream social-cultural “consumption theory” and studies of consumer society either ignore children and childhood completely or see children as appendages or adjuncts to the central claims, preoccupations and problems of this field of study (Cook 2008).
"This book examines the presence and effects of new technologies in the lives of young people. The rapid pace of change in the development and use of digital technologies, and the likely impact this has on youth, means that the topic has wide implications for educational institutions, theory and practice. There is a demand for a concentration on the ways in which new devices such as smart phones and tablets, as well as new platforms and recent notions such as the 'flipped classroom', are affecting the way education is being provided. However, there is also still a small minority who do not have full access to the internet, and the disadvantages suffered by this group must also be addressed. The internet offers a vast range of opportunities for young people, and yet for various reasons it is not always available. This can partly be attributed to the controls that schools impose on the use of digital technology, for reasons of safety and security, and can in part be explained by the fact that policy makers have contradictory attitudes to technology. While they may argue for the need to have a well-educated and well-trained workforce, they fear the threats to privacy and safety posed by the internet. This book asserts that society needs to have more open debate about the threats and opportunities of digital technology as it is a dynamic and ever-changing topic for us all."
The sociology of consumption pays relatively little detailed and systematic theoretical attention to children, while the sociology of childhood tends to view children’s consumption through what can be called the ‘production of consumption’ approach. This is surprising given the range of empirical and theoretical debate in the sociology of consumption, where ‘mode of consumption’,‘consumption as aesthetics’ and ‘material culture’ represent a further three approaches. By bringing together the sociologies of childhood and consumption, a framework for empirical research is advanced. Four inter-related themes are suggested: learning to consume; lifestyle and identity formation; children’s engagements with material culture; and the parent-child relationship. It is argued that such a framework offers scope to further understandings of how cultures of consumption impact on children, children and parents, and construct notions of childhood. A focus on children’s consumption also represents an opportunity to clarify key processes of influential theories of social change.
In both schools and homes, information and communication technologies (ICT) are widely seen as enhancing learning, this hope fuelling their rapid diffusion and adoption throughout developed societies. But they are not yet so embedded in the social practices of everyday life as to be taken for granted, with schools proving slower to change their lesson plans than they were to fit computers in the classroom. This article examines two possible explanations – first, that convincing evidence of improved learning outcomes remains surprisingly elusive, and second, the unresolved debate over whether ICT should be conceived of as supporting delivery of a traditional or a radically different vision of pedagogy based on soft skills and new digital literacies. The difficulty in establishing traditional benefits, and the uncertainty over pursuing alternative benefits, raises fundamental questions over whether society really desires a transformed, technologically-mediated relation between teacher and learner.
In the literature students are sometimes assumed to feel empowered with respect to learning because of their familiarity with and access to ICT. However, after interviewing 25 students from post-elementary schools, it was found that the majority of the students, although they use the Internet and other ICT for school purposes, believed that their generation is not as good at learning as the pre-ICT generation. Several students explained the situation in terms of the school’s failure to build on their abilities. Nonetheless, the majority believed that the Internet over-simplifies schoolwork (perceived primarily as the traditional processing of textual sources), which in turn diminishes learning abilities. These results carry important implications regarding school, given that low self-efficacy might make students less likely to apply themselves to learning.
An analysis of personal financial literacy among educators Iris BenDavid-Hadar Ph.D.
This study surveys 283 educators studying at universities and teachers' colleges in Israel. These educators voluntarily filled out a questionnaire designed to examine their personal financial literacy (FL). The relationships between their background characteristics, financial behavior, financial awareness, and FL are examined. Results show that the participants answered about 42% of the questions correctly, reflecting a low level of FL. Specific characteristics were found to be predictors of FL, with sport,
art, and music teachers, educators enrolled in principals’
preparation or BA programs, ethnic minorities, less experienced educators, non- secular educators, and low-SES educators displaying lower levels of FL, compared with their respective counterparts. Educators who were less exposed to financial information via the media also displayed lower levels of FL. Finally, most of the educators surveyed made inadequate decisions when presented with hypothetical financial situations. The low level of FL amongst educators may also affect the next generation's FL.
This paper analyzes the extent of income inequality from a global perspective, its drivers, and what to do about it. The drivers of inequality vary widely amongst countries, with some common drivers being the skill premium associated with technical change and globalization, weakening protection for labor, and lack of financial inclusion in developing countries. We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down. This suggests that policies need to be country specific but should focus on raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring there is no hollowing out of the middle class. To tackle inequality, financial inclusion is imperative in emerging and developing countries while in advanced economies, policies should focus on raising human capital and skills and making tax systems more progressive.
The American Diabetes Association currently recommends that all youth with type 1 diabetes over the age of 7 years follow a plan of intensive management. The purpose of this study was to describe stressors and self-care challenges reported by adolescents with type 1 diabetes who were undergoing initiation of intensive management. Subjects described initiation of intensive management as complicating the dilemmas they faced. The importance of individualized and nonjudgmental care from parents and health care providers was stressed. This study supports development of health care relationships and environments that are teen focused not merely disease-centered and embrace exploring options with the teen that will enhance positive outcomes.
Part 2 of Prensky’s paper exploring the differences between “digital natives” and “digital immigrants”. In this second part the author presents evidence to support these differences from neurology, social psychology and from studies done on children using games for learning.
Part one of this paper highlights how students today think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors, as a result of being surrounded by new technology. The author compares these “digital natives” with the older generation who are learning and adopting new technology naming them “digital immigrants”.
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 college-educated 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.
The First Edition of this contemporary classic can claim to have put ‘consumer culture’ on the map, certainly in relation to postmodernism. Updated throughout, this expanded new edition includes a fully revised preface that explores the developments in consumer culture since the First Edition. Among the most noteworthy areas discussed are the effect of global warming on consumption, the rise of the new rich, changes in the North/South divide and the new diversity of consumer culture. The result is a book that shakes the boundaries of debate, from one of the foremost writers on culture and postmodernism of the present day.
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