Culture and Financial Literacy

Martin Brown, Caroline Henchoz () and Thomas Spycher

No 1703, Working Papers on Finance from University of St. Gallen, School of Finance

Abstract: We study the effect of culture on financial literacy by comparing secondary-school students along the German-French language border within Switzerland. We find that students in the French-speaking area have a lower level of financial literacy than students in the German-speaking area. The difference in financial literacy across the language groups is stronger among native students than among immigrant students. A mediation analysis suggests that the cultural divide in financial literacy is mainly related to systematic differences in financial socialisation across the language groups. Students in the German speaking region are more likely to receive pocket money at an early age and are more likely to have independent access to a bank account.

Keywords: Culture; Financial Literacy; Financial Socialisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D03 D14 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2017-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul and nep-eur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://ux-tauri.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/sfwpfi/WPF-1703.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:usg:sfwpfi:2017:03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers on Finance from University of St. Gallen, School of Finance Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().