Family background and financial literacy of Italian students: the mediating role of attitudes and motivations

Sergio Longobardi (), Margherita Pagliuca () and Andrea Regoli ()
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Sergio Longobardi: University of Naples "Parthenope" (ITALY)
Margherita Pagliuca: University of Naples "Parthenope" (ITALY)
Andrea Regoli: University of Naples "Parthenope" (ITALY)

Economics Bulletin, 2017, vol. 37, issue 4, 2585-2594

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to assess the determinants of financial literacy amongst Italian students and to evaluate the role of students' attitudes and motivations as mediators for the influence of family background. We focus on the process of financial knowledge development of 15-year-old Italian students by exploiting the large amount of OECD-PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) data. Through the specification of a structural equation model (SEM), our results illustrate that the effect of family background on financial literacy is only partially mediated by the latent constructs that measure the students' attitudes and motivations. This suggests that the direct impact of the family context on financial literacy attainment still holds once the mediating effect of students' attitudes and motivations is accounted for. In addition, focusing on the gender gap, our findings indicate that the acquisition process of the financial competences, according to the hypothesised model, does not show significant differences between boys and girls.

Keywords: financial literacy; structural equation model; family background (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C1 I2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-11-19
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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