NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES
FINANCIAL LITERACY AND RETIREMENT PLANNING IN THE UNITED STATES
Annamaria Lusardi
Olivia S. Mitchell
Working Paper 17108
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17108
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
June 2011
The research reported herein was conducted pursuant to a grant from Netspar. Additional support was
provided by FINRA Investor Education and the Pension Research Council and Boettner Center at
the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The authors thank Chris Bumcrot and Judy
Lin for help with the data and Agar Brugiavini for very helpful comments. Useful comments were
also provided by participants at the April 2010 Mathematical and Statistical Methods for Actuarial
Sciences and Finance conference in Ravello, Italy, and participants in the December 2010 Financial
Literacy around the World conference at Collegio Carlo Alberto, Turin, Italy. The authors also thank
Ben Rump for excellent research assistance and Audrey Brown for editorial support. Opinions and
errors are solely those of the authors and not of the institutions with which the authors are affiliated.
The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
National Bureau of Economic Research.
NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-
reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official
NBER publications.
© 2011 by Annamaria Lusardi and Olivia S. Mitchell. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not
to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including
© notice, is given to the source.
Financial Literacy and Retirement Planning in the United States
Annamaria Lusardi and Olivia S. Mitchell
NBER Working Paper No. 17108
June 2011
JEL No. D14,D91
ABSTRACT
We examine financial literacy in the United States using the new National Financial Capability Study,
wherein we demonstrate that financial literacy is particularly low among the young, women, and the
less-educated. Moreover, Hispanics and African-Americans score the least well on financial literacy
concepts. Interestingly, all groups rate themselves as rather well-informed about financial matters,
notwithstanding their actual performance on the key literacy questions. Finally, we show that people
who score higher on the financial literacy questions are also much more likely to plan for retirement,
which is likely to leave them better positioned for old-age. Our results will inform those seeking to
target financial literacy programs to those in most need.
Annamaria Lusardi
George Washington School of Business
2201 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20037
and NBER
Olivia S. Mitchell
University of Pennsylvania
Wharton School
3620 Locust Walk, St 3000 SH-DH
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6302
and NBER
1
Introduction
Individuals and their families are increasingly taking on responsibility for securing their
own financial wellbeing in retirement in the United States and around the world. Prior to the
1980s, many U.S. workers relied mainly on Social Security and employer-sponsored defined
benefit (DB) pension plans. Today, by contrast, Baby Boomers are increasingly turning to
defined contribution (DC) plans and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) to help finance their
golden years. Indeed, in 1980, about 40% of private-sector pension contributions went to DC
plans; 20 years later, almost 90% of such contributions went to personal accounts (mostly 401(k)
plans; Poterba, Venti and Wise, 2008). The transition to the DC retirement saving model has the
advantage of permitting more worker flexibility and labor mobility than in the past, yet it also
imposes on employees a greater responsibility to save, invest, and decumulate their retirement
wealth sensibly. Furthermore, the spread of DC plans means that workers today are directly and
immediately exposed to financial market risks, a reality that was less evident in the old DB
system. And as many DB plans have been frozen or terminated, the individually-managed model
will increasingly become the mainstay of retirement.
For this reason, individuals will increasingly be called to “roll their own” retirement
saving and decumulation plans, and their retirement security will depend ever more on individual
decisions. This paper investigates the extent to which Americans are equipped to make decisions
in this new pension and financial landscape, and in particular, whether they are sufficiently
knowledgeable about economics and finance to plan for retirement. Our goal is to focus on
financial literacy, by which we mean the ability to do some simple calculations and knowledge
2
of some fundamental financial concepts.
1
The analysis is facilitated by a new U.S. dataset
known as the 2009 National Survey of 1,488 American adults collected as part of the National
Financial Capability Study (described in more detail below).
2
We show that a large majority of
Americans fails to understand critical financial concepts including interest compounding,
inflation, and risk diversification, and these shortcomings are most acute for women, the less-
educated, and older individuals. Moreover, many people have failed to plan for retirement, even
when this life event looms only five to ten years off. This is critical since, as we have shown
elsewhere, lack of retirement planning translates into low levels of retirement wealth
accumulation (Lusardi and Mitchell 2007a, 2008a, 2009, 2011). As the National Commission on
Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (2010: 53) recently argued, it is key to provide “better
information to the public on the full implications of various retirement decisions, with an eye
toward encouraging delayed retirement and enhanced levels of retirement savings.” Yet if people
are unable to make sense of this information when provided, the messages may fall on deaf ears.
3
In what follows, we first offer an overview of the new dataset used in the analysis. We
then describe the key questions on financial literacy and retirement planning and provide a
multivariate analysis linking these two. A final section concludes.
Data Overview and Summary Statistics
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Investor Education Foundation,
undertook a detailed telephone survey in 2009 known as the National Financial Capability Study,
1
See Behrman et al. (2010) and Lusardi (2010). The alternative term financial capability is often used by U.K.
regulators (c.f. Atkinson et al. 2007).
2
The FINRA Investor Education Foundation collaborated with the U.S. Department of the Treasury to design and
field the survey, described at http://www.finrafoundation.org/resources/research/p120478
; see also Lusardi (2010).
3
The problem of financial illiteracy and lack of retirement planning is now salient in several other countries as well,
and the awareness has driven data collection efforts in at least 20 nations. The United Kingdom fielded a survey on
financial capability in 2005, and similar efforts have underway in New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, Canada, and the
Netherlands (Atkinson et al. 2006, 2007). New Zealand, about which more is provided in Crossan et al. (2011), is
one of the few countries to have a panel survey affording new information over a three-year span.
3
with the purpose of benchmarking key indicators of financial capability and linking these
indicators to demographic, behavioral, attitudinal, and financial literacy characteristics. About
1,500 American adults were contacted by telephone; the primary sample of 1,200 respondents
was constructed to be representative of the general adult U.S. population.
4
Since financial
capability is multidimensional, several indicators were collected. Consistent with surveys from
other countries, the National Survey explored how people manage their resources and make
financial decisions, what skill sets they use in making such decisions, and how they search for
and glean information when making those decisions. In the present paper, we focus on two main
areas of financial capability, namely financial literacy and self-assessed skills, and retirement
planning. We outline key findings next.
Findings Regarding Financial Literacy. To evaluate Americans’ financial knowledge,
respondents were asked three questions covering fundamental concepts of economics and
finance, expressed as they would be in everyday transactions, such as simple calculations about
interest rates and inflation and the workings of risk diversification.
5
The exact wording of
questions is as follows:
1) Suppose you had $100 in a savings account and the interest rate was 2% per year. After 5
years, how much do you think you would have in the account if you left the money to grow?
More than $102
Exactly $102
Less than $102
Do not know
Refuse to answer
2) Imagine that the interest rate on your savings account was 1% per year and inflation was 2%
per year. After 1 year, how much would you be able to buy with the money in this account?
More than today
Exactly the same
4
To ensure representativeness, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, and adults with less than a high
school education were oversampled.
5
These questions were first used by Lusardi and Mitchell (2011) in their analysis of older Americans in the 2004
Health and Retirement Study.
4
Less than today
Do not know
Refuse to answer
3) Please tell me whether this statement is true or false. “Buying a single company’s stock
usually provides a safer return than a stock mutual fund.”
True
False
Do not know
Refuse to answer
The first two questions indicate whether respondents have command of the economic concepts
most fundamentally related to saving. The third question evaluates knowledge of risk
diversification, crucial to the making of informed investment decisions.
6
Summary statistics to these questions appear in Table 1. Panel A shows that some 65
percent of the respondents can correctly answer the question about interest rates. This is a
discouragingly low number, given the question’s simplicity and the fact that respondents did not
have to make a calculation but could merely select from a set of answers. The proportion rises a
bit for respondents age 25-65, but not much. Only 64 percent of respondents get the inflation
question right. Around 20 percent of respondents gets this question wrong, and another 14
percent cannot answer the question (Panel B). While more of the 25-65 age bracket get the
answers right, still over 20 percent are incorrect and 12 percent state they do not know. The third
question, on risk diversification, gives respondents the most difficulty: only about half of this
representative sample of the US population gets it right, while around a third cannot answer
(Panel C). Even among the prime age group (25-65), almost a third (31 percent) cannot provide
an answer.
Table 1 here
6
The National Survey also asks questions on financial literacy related to bond pricing and mortgages; see Lusardi
(2010) for detail. Since these questions are not available in the surveys conducted in other countries, we do not
report them here.
5
Responses to these three literacy questions are also positively correlated, meaning that
those who answer one question correctly are also likely to get the other two right. Nevertheless,
the correlation is not particularly high which suggests that each question measures a different
aspect of financial knowledge. Across all age groups, under half (46 percent) can correctly
answer both the interest rate and inflation questions, and fewer than a third (30 percent) get all
three questions correct in Table 1 (Panel D). Among those age 25-65, half (51 percent) get the
first two questions right, and a third (35 percent) handles all three accurately. In view of the
complex financial decisions that individuals confront in the current economic environment, these
are discouragingly low success rates. Moreover, many respondents (40 percent in some cases)
indicate they “do not know” how to answer; this is important since such response characterize
those who know the least (Lusardi and Mitchell 2011).
Our findings using the National Capability Survey reinforce reports from past studies of
the US population as a whole (Bernheim 1995, 1998; Hilgert, Hogarth and Beverly 2003; Moore
2003); surveys on the over-50 group in the Health and Retirement Study (Lusardi and Mitchell,
2007a); and recent work with all ages in the American Life Panel (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2009).
Who Is Financially Illiterate? We also find that specific socio-demographic groups are
particularly vulnerable, as indicated in Table 2. Here financial literacy is lowest among younger
persons (under age 35) as well as the group older than age 65. While we cannot differentiate age
from cohort effects in a cross-section, it is striking that so many of the young are poorly
informed about risk diversification and inflation. Fewer than half (46 percent) of young
respondents answer the inflation question correctly, and fewer still (43 percent) understand risk
diversification. This confirms recent reports of low financial literacy among young adults (age
23-28) in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (Lusardi, Mitchell, and Curto, 2010) and
6
high school students (NCEE 2005; Mandell 2008). Shortfalls in financial literacy at older ages
are confirmed by Lusardi and Mitchell (2011) and Lusardi and Tufano (2009a, b).
Table 2 here
Table 2 also shows that women are less financially literate than men, and these
differences are statistically significant, particularly for the interest rate and inflation questions.
Women are also much more likely to state that they cannot answer a question, indicative of very
low levels of knowledge; this is the most pronounced for the risk diversification question, where
41 percent cannot answer. Moreover, women are less likely to answer all questions correctly.
These findings underscore sex differences in literacy detected among the young and the older
population (Lusardi, Mitchell, and Curto, 2010; Lusardi and Mitchell, 2008a), and in the
American Life Panel and TNS surveys (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2009; Lusardi and Tufano, 2009a,
b). Table 2 also shows that financial literacy is positively correlated with schooling attainment.
The least financially literate are those who lack a high school degree; only about half of such
respondents can answer the interest rate question right (and another quarter cannot answer). The
prevalence of correct answers to the interest rate question rises with education, while the
proportion of both incorrect and “don’t know” answers (DKs) falls. A similar pattern
characterizes the inflation question: those without a high school degree are more often incorrect
or unable to answer. The risk diversification question is clearly more difficult, since only those
with at least a college degree can answer accurately; even here, however, about one-fifth cannot
supply an answer. Conversely, half of those lacking a high school degree indicate they cannot
answer the diversification question. And scores also differ by employment status, as indicated in
Table 2: those not employed do much worse on the three questions than do workers or the self-
employed (and differences are statistically significant). Nonworkers are also much more likely to
7
respond DK, with the proportion as high as 42 percent.
7
It is noteworthy that the retired are
much more likely to answer correctly the question about inflation, perhaps because they have
experience with it.
Racial/Ethnic Differences in Actual and Self-assessed Financial Literacy. It is also
instructive to compare financial literacy differences by racial/ethnic groups, and the National
Survey oversampled these groups so as to be able to study them in more detail. Prior research has
found quite different patterns of wealth and retirement saving (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2007a;
Lusardi and Beeler, 2007; Ariel Investment 2010), which may be in part the result of differential
patterns displayed in Table 3 which tallies the results for Whites, African-Americans, Hispanics,
Asians, and others, and it shows that both African-American and Hispanic respondents display
lower levels of financial knowledge than do White/Asian respondents.
Table 3 here
Specifically, only 56 percent of Hispanics correctly answer the interest rate question, and
a sizable fraction (19 percent) does not know the answer. This is a potentially important result in
view of the fact that many Hispanics tend to be unbanked and do not hold checking accounts
(Hogarth, Anguelov, and Lee, 2004). A similar pattern emerges with regard to the inflation
question: Hispanic respondents are least likely to answer correctly (42 percent). African-
American respondents also have a low fraction of correct responses to this question (56 percent).
As far as knowledge of risk diversification, Hispanic and African-American respondents both
have difficulty: only one-third (38 percent) of Hispanics and 42 percent of African-Americans
respond correctly, and many cannot answer the question at all. These figures confirm other
reports of U.S. racial/ethnic differences in financial literacy (Lusardi and Tufano, 2009a).
7
Response patterns between self-employed and wage workers are not significantly different, perhaps because the
self-employed group is heterogenous (it does not include only business owners or entrepreneurs; c.f. Hurst and
Lusardi, 2004).
8
To complement the questions measuring actual financial literacy, the National Survey
also asks respondents about how they self-assess their own financial knowledge. This is useful to
identify if there is any mismatch between perceived versus actual knowledge. To this end,
survey respondents are asked:
On a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 means very low and 7 means very high, how would you assess
your overall financial knowledge?
While we have seen that many respondents actually fare poorly on the three financial concepts
questions, results in Table 4 indicate that they believe that they do rather well. Around two-fifths
(38 percent) award themselves the top knowledge scores (6-7), and only 13 percent give
themselves failing marks (1-3). Overall, almost 70 percent of respondents believe they are
above-median with regard to financial knowledge, a figure that greatly exceeds what is revealed
from our review of actual knowledge.
Table 4 here
We can determine whether sub-groups are aware of their lack of financial knowledge by
comparing Tables 2 and 4. The young seem aware of their lack of financial knowledge and give
themselves relatively low scores (the lowest score of any age subgroup), but the opposite is true
among the older group where actual knowledge is low but self-rated scores are high. As many as
27 percent of older respondents grant themselves the highest self-rated score (7), and on average
they score themselves a mark of 5.2, higher than other age subgroups. The extent of the
mismatch between actual and self-assessed knowledge may explain why older people often are
offered less financially attractive deals than other groups (Agarwal et al., 2009); this also
corroborates Lusardi and Tufano (2009a) who show that older persons display the largest gap
between actual and self-assessed financial knowledge related to debt.
9
Patterns for other factors are also of interest. While women are less financially literate
than men by actual metrics, they also score themselves more conservatively. The less educated
know they are uninformed and grade themselves low; even among the least educated, however,
over half (57 percent) score themselves as fairly well-informed (5-7). Looking across
racial/ethnic groups, Whites score themselves the highest which correlates with their higher
actual knowledge, whereas the relationship is weaker for other racial groups. Interestingly, some
40 percent of Whites bestow on themselves top self-assessment scores (6-7), though earlier we
showed that many could not answer simple financial questions. Hispanics and African-
Americans give themselves lower scores than Whites, but differences in self-assessed knowledge
are narrower than the patterns of correct responses to the three financial literacy questions.
Overall, while self-assessments and actual knowledge are positively correlated, the relationship
is only loose. Few respondents self-assess themselves as having low financial knowledge, though
they may be unable to address basic financial concepts.
Planning for Retirement. Another measure of financial capability we can investigate using the
National Survey has to do with whether respondents look ahead and plan for the future. Our
particular focus is on retirement planning, so we pose the following question (also asked in the
2004 HRS):
Have you ever tried to figure out how much you need to save for retirement?
This is important since prior research has established that planners also accumulate far more
retirement wealth (Lusardi, 1999; Lusardi and Beeler, 2007; Lusardi and Mitchell 2007a, 2007b,
2011).
Unfortunately, and despite the need for self-reliance in retirement saving, the data show
that most Americans do not engage in retirement planning (see Table 5). For instance, only about
10
two-fifths of our respondents (43 percent) say they ever even tried to figure out how much they
should save for retirement, and this pattern is pervasive across all groups examined. Younger
respondents are least likely to plan, perhaps feeling they have a longer time horizon; more
worrisome is the fact that only 57 percent of respondents age 50–65 have attempted to figure out
how much they need to save for retirement (and the proportion is only slightly higher for those
who have not yet retired.) While the prevalence of planning does rise with age, there is a sizable
share of people near retirement that has never attempted to figure out how much they need.
These results underscore findings from the Health and Retirement Study and the Retirement
Confidence Survey (Lusardi 1999, 2005, 2009; Lusardi and Mitchell, 2007a; Yakoboski and
Dickemper, 1997).
Table 5 here
We also examine whether financial literacy and retirement planning are correlated,
because lack of planning may be perhaps due to lack of financial knowledge. Table 5 confirms
that retirement planning and financial literacy are, in fact, strongly positively associated in this
dataset. For instance, those who get all three financial literacy questions correct are much more
likely to have tried to figure out how much they need to save for retirement, and the positive
relationship is particularly sharp for those that understand risk diversification. To explore these
topics in more detail, in the next section we employ a multivariate model to examine the links
between financial literacy and planning.
A Multivariate Model of Planning and Financial Literacy
11
Previous work has demonstrated that financial literacy is an essential tool for informed
consumer choice in a variety of settings. For example, the less financially literate participate less
in the stock market (van Rooij et al. 2011); choose mutual funds with higher fees (Hastings and
Tejeda-Ashton, 2008); select higher-cost pension managers (Hastings and Mitchell 2010); and
amass less retirement wealth (Behrman et al. 2010). There is also evidence that financial literacy
affects borrowing behavior; for instance, the less literate are more likely to have costly
mortgages (Moore 2003) and more likely to engage in high-cost borrowing (Lusardi and Tufano
2009a). Moreover, people with characteristics linked to low literacy, including low pay and little
education, tend not to refinance their mortgages when interest rates are falling (Campbell 2006).
There is also research linking financial literacy and retirement planning for a range of population
subgroups (Lusardi, 2008, Lusardi and Mitchell 2007a, 2008a, 2009, 2011).
Our new dataset is useful in determining whether this finding is robust and whether it
holds true in the aftermath of the unusually severe financial crisis of 2008-09. To do so, we use
multivariate regression analysis to relate the determinants of retirement planning to financial
literacy, controlling for variables reflective of differences in preferences, lifetime income, and
macroeconomic shocks. The sample is restricted to non-retired respondents younger than age 65,
to exclude those in the decumulation phase of the lifecycle. We also omit those younger than age
25, to eliminate those in school or not yet working. The list of controls includes age (and age
squared to test for a hump-shaped profile), as well as sex, race/ethnicity, and marital status; other
controls include income levels, region of residence, and educational attainment. We also add an
indicator for the self-employed, as they are very different from the rest of the population both in
terms of lifetime income and wealth (Hurst et al. 2010). To proxy for household shocks and
liquidity constraints, we add an indicator for having a large and unexpected drop in income
12
during the past year, for non-working which includes the unemployed, and for the number of
children financially dependent on the respondent. Two different measures of financial literacy
are used, one an indicator equal to 1 if the respondent answers all three questions correctly (and 0
otherwise), and a second which sums each respondent’s number of correct answers to the
financial literacy questions (0-3).
Table 6 reports results using OLS regression with our two different financial literacy
measures. In both cases, the coefficient on the literacy term is positive and statistically
significant. In other words, financial literacy is positively linked to retirement planning, even
after accounting for a rather complete set of control variables. In column 1, for instance, those
who answer all three questions correctly are almost 10 percentage points more likely to plan for
retirement; in column 2, those who answer one more financial literacy questions correctly are
four percentage points more likely to be planners. We also note that the effect of financial
literacy is smaller than but similar to the effect of having some college or a college degree;
furthermore, financial literacy has an independent and statistically significant effect even after
controlling for educational attainment. In other words, education alone does not account for the
effect of having financial knowledge.
8
We also call attention to an interesting effect resulting
from the financial crisis. Those who suffered a large decrease in income are more likely to plan
for retirement afterwards, suggesting that negative shocks of the last few years have motivated
people to think more about the future.
9
Other factors important to planning include income
levels, race/ethnicity, and having many children.
Table 6 here
8
This confirms findings in the developing country context reported by Behrman et al. (2010) and Hastings and
Mitchell (2010).
9
A related finding is reported by Lusardi (2005).
13
These findings are consistent with evidence on subgroups of Americans reported in other
studies. For example, among the older Health and Retirement Study population, as well the
broader age group in the American Life Panel, we have shown that more financial knowledge
increases people’s likelihood of planning for retirement (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2008a, 2009,
2011). Inasmuch as the National Survey questions closely track questions used in these other
surveys, we believe that the relationship between financial literacy and retirement planning is a
robust finding.
In Table 7, we take up the ancillary question of whether financial literacy may itself be
endogenous. That is, financial literacy might be the result of choice, so for example some who will
plan for retirement may invest in financial education that in turns boosts their financial literacy
levels. For this reason, a positive relationship between planning and financial literacy could be
contaminated due to reverse causality. Additionally, financial literacy could be measured with
error which could yield downward biased estimates. And finally, respondents might be sensitive
to how questions are asked, and there is at least the possibility of some amount of guessing (van
Rooij et al. 2011 ; Lusardi and Mitchell 2009).
Table 7 here
To address these issues, it is useful to re-estimate the impact of financial literacy on
planning controlling for possible causality with an Instrumental Variables (IV) approach.
10
To
do so in the U.S. context, we take advantage of the fact that several states mandated high school
financial education in the past (mostly for political reasons rather than to stimulate retirement
planning; see Bernheim et al., 2001). Accordingly we can estimate a first-stage regression of
financial literacy on exposure to the mandate, to account for exogenous variation in financial
literacy. The National Survey asks respondents to indicate the state in which they lived in their
10
This approach was first proposed by Bernheim et al. (2001) and later extended by Lusardi and Mitchell (2009).
14
senior year of high school, which permits us to compute the number of years the mandate was in
effect relevant to the respondent. This approach accounts not only for whether a state
implemented the mandate, but also for the length of time that mandated benefits were in effect.
For example, if a respondent was a high school Senior in 1980 and his home state had
implemented a mandate in 1970, the instrument would take the value of 10.
11
We then re-
estimate the planning model given the instrumented financial literacy variable.
Results in Table 7 use an enlarged sample to increase the strength of our instrument;
specifically we include respondents younger than 25. Because the instrument only predicts one
measure of financial literacy (correct number of answers) significantly, we focus mainly on that
measure. Our results indicate that the impact of financial literacy on planning is still positive and
statistically significant. Moreover, the estimated financial literacy coefficient is larger than the
OLS estimate. For this reason, it appears that financial literacy does drive retirement planning,
even after accounting for endogeneity and possible error in the financial literacy measures. This
finding underscores the importance of enhancing financial literacy for retirement wellbeing,
particularly building on prior studies showing evidence of similar causality.
Discussion and Conclusions
Our findings from the National Financial Capability Survey paint a troubling picture of
the current state of financial knowledge in the United States. Many respondents lack key
knowledge of financial concepts and fail to plan for retirement, even when retirement is close at
hand, only 5-10 years off. This is important since being able to develop and implement
11
Because the mandate may have been in place a long time before younger respondents went to high school, the
sign of this term in the first stage regression could be positive or negative. Table 6 shows the first stage estimates
and indicates that the number of years the mandate has been in effects has a negative sign.
15
retirement plans is key to retirement security: those who do not plan reach retirement with half
the wealth of those who do. Perhaps part of the explanation is debt illiteracy; people lack
knowledge about the workings of credit cards and interest compounding (Lusardi and Tufano
2009a), which might explain why financial illiteracy correlates with lower retirement wealth
accumulation. It is also worrisome that the low-paid and less educated persons know less, as they
are most vulnerable to bad financial decisions. Indeed financial illiteracy may place great strain
on families and personal finance, leading to suboptimal decisions regarding investment,
retirement, and spending. Moreover, when people make poor financial decisions, the cost of
those decisions may be passed on to others when they rely on social safety nets requiring
consequent tax increases.
Clearly the cost of financial illiteracy is a social problem which is likely to devolve not
only to the least capable individuals, but to society as a whole. As the President Obama’s
Advisory Council on Financial Literacy recently stated (PACFL, 2008, np): "While the crisis
has many causes, it is undeniable that financial illiteracy is one of the root causes... Sadly, far too
many Americans do not have the basic financial skills necessary to develop and maintain a
budget, to understand credit, to understand investment vehicles, or to take advantage of our
banking system. It is essential to provide basic financial education that allows people to better
navigate an economic crisis such as this one.” Enhancing financial literacy is critical to
successful retirement, particularly among the most financially vulnerable.
16
Data Appendix
In consultation with the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the President’s Advisory
Council on Financial Literacy, the FINRA Investor Education Foundation supported a national
study of the financial capability of American adults. The overarching research objectives were to
benchmark key indicators of financial capability and evaluate how these indicators vary with
underlying demographic, behavioral, attitudinal, and financial literacy characteristics.
The National Financial Capability Study consists of three linked surveys:
National Survey: A nationally-projectable telephone survey of 1,488 American adults;
State-By-State Survey: A state-by-state online survey of approximately 28,000 American
adults (roughly 500 per state, plus the District of Columbia);
Military Survey: An online survey of 800 military service members and spouses.
The survey instruments were designed by a multi-disciplinary team including Dr. Annamaria
Lusardi, the Applied Research & Consulting LLC (ARC), the FINRA Investor Education
Foundation, and the Office of Financial Education of the U.S. Treasury Department. Additional
input was provided by Craig Copeland of the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), the
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and Robert Willis of the University
of Michigan, among others. The National Survey was administered to respondents between May
and July of 2009 on a primary sample of 1,200 respondents constructed to be representative of
the general adult U.S. population. To ensure a sufficient number of respondents for the analysis,
African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans and adults with less than a high school
education were oversampled. The total number of respondents in the sample was 1,488. The
results of the State-by-State Survey and the Military Survey were released in December 2010.
17
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Table 1: Summary Statistics on Three Financial Literacy Questions in the National Financial Capability
Survey (%)
A: Interest Question Full Sample Age 25-65
>$102 64.9% 67.7%
=$102 11.3% 12.4%
<$102 9.2% 8.1%
DK 13.5% 11.1%
RF 1.0% 0.7%
B: Inflation Question
More 11.2% 10.7%
Exactly the same 9.0% 8.1%
Less 64.3% 68.4%
DK 14.2% 11.7%
RF 1.4% 1.1%
C: Risk Question
Correct (false) 51.8% 55.5%
Incorrect (true) 13.3% 12.5%
DK 33.7% 31.0%
RF 1.2% 1.1%
D: Cross-question Consistency
Interest & Inflation 46.2% 50.9%
All correct 30.2% 35.0%
None correct 12.3% 10.4%
At least 1 DK 42.4% 37.2%
All DK 4.7% 4.0%
# Observations
1488 1042
Note: Distributions of responses to financial literacy questions in full sample and for those aged 25-65. All figures
are weighted. DK indicates respondent does not know. RF indicates responded refused to answer.
22
Table 2: Distribution of Responses to Financial Literacy Questions by Age, Sex, Education, and Employment
Status in the National Financial Capability Survey (%)
Interest Inflation Risk Overall
Age Correct DK Correct DK Correct DK 3 Correct >=1 DK
<35 64.1 14.6 45.8 21 43 38.8 19.4 50.6
36-50 66.5 10.4 71.4 9.9 58.1 29.4 36.8 35.4
51-65 69 11.5 77.6 9.2 60.3 26.9 40.5 32.6
<65 58.2 19 0.4 15.1 46.9 40.3 26.2 51.2
Sex
Male 71.3 10.3 71 9.8 57.1 25.6 38.3 34.3
Female 58.8 16.6 58 18.4 46.8 41.4 22.5 50
Education
<HS 51.3 25.1 46.1 29.4 37.8 48.2 12.6 59.6
HS grad 57.5 17.4 57.1 16 36.3 43.2 19.2 53.8
Some College 67.7 10.7 71.8 12.9 54.7 32.3 31.3 40.6
College grad 74.4 6.6 69.6 7 69.9 19.5 44.3 25.8
Post grad 84.2 4.2 83.8 2.6 82.2 11 63.8 14.1
Employment Status
Self employed 66.8 6.5 68.5 8.8 59.9 25.6 36.8 29.5
Not employed 56.2 19.5 50 20.7 39.3 42.1 15.3 53.9
Working 69.8 10.9 66.8 12 56.7 30.3 36.3 37.9
Retired 62.6 15.9 74.8 14.2 51.3 35.7 30.4 45.5
Note: All figures are weighted. DK indicates respondent does not know. RF indicates responded refused to answer.
23
Table 3: Distribution of Responses to Financial Literacy Questions by Race/Ethnicity in the National
Financial Capability Survey (%)
Interest Inflation Risk Overall
Correct DK Correct DK Correct DK 3 Correct >=1 DK
White
67.1 12.8 69.5 12.9 55.7 33.7 34.7 41.7
African-
American
61.8 11.7 56.3 16.5 42.5 32 20.3 40.4
Hispanic
56.2 19.2 42.4 21 37.9 38.9 13.1 50.7
Asian
68 11.9 69.8 8.7 60 25.9 39.8 33.6
Other*
58.4 13.8 66.7 13.5 46.9 26.4 24.7 42.2
Note: All figures are weighted. DK indicates respondent does not know. RF indicates responded refused to answer..
*N=49.
24
Table 4: Distribution of Responses to Self-Reported Financial Literacy Questions by Age, Sex, Education,
Employment Status, and Race/Ethnicity in the National Financial Capability Survey (%)
Number Correct
1-3 4 5 6 7 Average
Full Sample
13.5 16.2 32.3 20.2 17.5 5
Age
25-65 12.4 15.1 34.1 22 16 5
<=35 17 18.1 34.6 16.8 13.2 4.8
36-50 11.7 18.5 34.1 22 13.7 5
51-65 11.4 12.8 29 24.8 21.2 5.2
>65 12.5 13.4 28.8 17.7 27.1 5.2
Sex
Male 12.6 16.9 31.9 21 17.4 5
Female 14.3 15.6 32.5 19.5 17.5 5
Education
<HS 23 18.8 31 10.4 15.8 4.5
HS grad 17.1 16.3 30 17.9 18.1 4.9
Some College 10.9 18.5 32.8 20.4 17.2 5.1
College grad 6.1 12.1 35.7 28.4 17.7 5.4
Post grad 8.7 12.6 33.8 26.7 18.2 5.3
Employment
Status
Self employed 10.9 11.6 30.9 16.6 30 5.3
Not employed 22.2 18.7 27.7 15.5 15.4 4.6
Working 11.1 17 35.4 22.8 13.5 5
Retired 9.5 13.3 30.4 21.7 24.4 5.3
Race/Ethnicity
White 12.2 14.8 32.6 22.1 17.9 5.1
African American 18.8 15.7 26.1 18.2 20.1 4.8
Hispanic 16.3 22.1 35.5 13.3 12.8 4.7
Asian 11.6 18.9 32.3 20.3 16 5
Other 13 22.2 29.6 13.5 21.6 5
Note: All figures are weighted.
25
Table 5: Financial Literacy of Planners and Non-Planners in the National Financial Capability Survey (%)
Planners Non-Planners
Interest Rate Question
Correct 73.1 62.2
DK 6.7 15.1
Inflation Question
Correct 76.1 58.9
DK 5.3 18
Risk Diversification Question
Correct 68.7 43.7
DK 20.8 40.1
Summary
Correct: Interest & Inflation 59.7 40.9
Correct: All three 47 23.9
Number Correct Answers 2.2 1.6
Note: Sample consists of 966 non-retired respondents age 25-65.
26
Table 6: OLS Estimates of Retirement Planning on Financial Literacy in the National Financial Capability
Survey
Column (1) dependent variable = 1 if correct on all 3 financial literacy questions (0 else)
Column (2) dependent variable is the total count of correct answers to 3 financial literacy questions.
1 2
Financial Literacy Measure
All three correct 0.091***
(0.04)
Total number correct 0.043**
(0.02)
Socio-demographic Controls
Age 0.003 0.003
(0.01) (0.01)
Female -0.009 -0.007
(0.03) (0.03)
>=High School 0.07 0.065
(0.06) (0.06)
Some college 0.139** 0.130**
(0.06) (0.07)
College 0.222*** 0.217***
(0.07) (0.07)
Post graduate 0.205*** 0.203***
(0.03) (0.03)
Single -0.019 -0.024
(0.04) (0.05)
Separated 0.02 0.02
(0.05) (0.05)
Widow 0.241** 0.236**
(0.10) (0.10)
Income, 2
n
d
quartile 0.099** 0.096**
(0.05) (0.05)
Income, 3
r
d
quartile 0.300*** 0.295***
($0.06) ($0.06)
Income, 4
th
quartile 0.373*** 0.370***
(0.06) (0.06)
Self-employed -0.085* -0.083*
(0.05) (0.05)
Not working -0.058 -0.057
(0.04) (0.04)
Had income shock 0.101*** 0.096***
(0.03) (0.03)
Constant -0.034 -0.059
(0.27) (0.27)
R-squared 0.227 0.226
Note: Robust standard errors in parentheses; ***p<0.01; **p<0.05; *p<0.1
Other controls include number of children, age squared, region of residence, and homeowner. Sample consists of
966 non-retired respondents age 25-65.
27
Table 7: OLS versus IV Estimates of Financial Literacy Impact in the National Financial Capability Survey
Columns (1 and 3) dependent variable = 1 if planner (0 else); Column (2) dependent variable is the total count of
correct answers to 3 financial literacy questions.
OLS Planner 1
s
t
stage IV Planner
Financial Literacy
Measure
# correct
Total number correct 0.051*** 0.277**
(0.02) (0.14)
Mandate Years -0.012***
(0.00)
Socio-demographic
Controls
Age
0.001 0.01 -0.004
(0.01) (0.02) (0.01)
Female
-0.004 -0.374*** 0.081
(0.03) (0.06) (0.06)
>=High School
0.001 0.115 0
(0.05) (0.12) (0.05)
Some college
0.054 0.529*** -0.039
(0.06) (0.12) (0.08)
College
0.159*** 0.588*** 0.051
(0.06) (0.13) (0.09)
Post graduate
0.142** 0.856*** -0.026
(0.07) (0.14) (0.13)
Single
-0.037 0.012 -0.04
(0.04) (0.08) (0.05)
Separated
0.019 0.143 0.05
(0.05) (0.10) (0.06)
Widow
0.246** -0.201 0.297***
(0.10) (0.18) (0.11)
Income, 2
n
d
quartile
0.101** -0.018 0.103**
(0.04) (0.09) (0.05)
Income, 3
r
d
quartile
0.287*** 0.274** 0.223***
($0.05) ($0.11) (0.07)
Income, 4
th
quartile
0.358*** 0.316*** 0.284***
(0.05) (0.11) (0.08)
Self-employed
-0.041 -0.148* -0.009
(0.05) (0.09) (0.06)
Not working
-0.060* -0.139( -0.031
(0.03) (0.07) (0.04)
Had income shock
0.079*** 0.054 0.068**
(0.03) (0.06) (0.03)
Constant
0.049 1.255*** -0.173
(0.15) (0.35) (0.20)
R-squared 0.251 0.252 0.09
Note: Robust standard errors in parentheses; ***p<0.01; **p<0.05; *p<0.1.
Other controls include number of children, age squared, region of residence, and homeowner. Sample consists of
1169 non-retired respondents under the age of 65.
