How gender, marital status, and gender norms affect savings goals

Ariane Agunsoye, Jerome Monne, Janette Rutterford and Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos

Kyklos, 2022, vol. 75, issue 2, 157-183

Abstract: Setting savings goals can increase wealth accumulation behaviour, yet it depends on how challenging the goals are. Using rarely available savings goal data from 1,760 clients of an advisory investment firm, we identify gender attitudinal differences in goal amounts: men choose more ambitious savings goals than women, independently from expected life‐long earnings. This, however, holds only for individuals living in a couple, for which men's savings goals reach the highest levels. Based on insights from qualitative research (56 semi‐structured interviews of 60 participants), we argue that these differences originate from gender‐normative roles assigned to members within the households. Most women are assigned to daily budget management, exacerbating worries about financial security issues in the short term and negatively impacting savings goals. This observation holds even when women, rather than men, manage long‐term investment for the household. Men's assignment to long‐term financial planning is related to optimism and ambition with regards to their savings goal choice, but these attitudes remain conditional on the fact that they do not deal with day‐to‐day budget management.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/kykl.12294

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:bla:kyklos:v:75:y:2022:i:2:p:157-183

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0023-5962

Access Statistics for this article

Kyklos is currently edited by Rene L. Frey

More articles in Kyklos from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().