 Financial literacy and household financial behavior in SingaporeJoelle H. Fong Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, 2025, vol. 90, issue C Abstract: Ordinary consumers make a variety of various financial decisions over their life course, and this has become more challenging over time given the proliferation of financially complex products in the retail marketplace. Using a representative survey in Singapore, we show that that financial literacy explains a wide range of savings, investment, and borrowing decisions among households. Financially savvy individuals are more likely to allocate their savings to assets such as stocks, retirement annuities, and life insurance, and additionally, demonstrate greater propensity to own at least two financially complex products. There is also suggestive evidence that Singaporeans are using debt instruments in an informed manner: while financially literate respondents have more debt, they are also far more likely to repay their debt on time. We provide empirical evidence that these relationships are causal. Accordingly, boosting financial literacy can help strengthen household balance sheets on both the asset and liability sides. Keywords: Defined contribution; Financial literacy; Household finance; Saving; Borrowing (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pacfin:v:90:y:2025:i:c:s0927538x24004037 DOI: 10.1016/j.pacfin.2024.102651 Access Statistics for this article Pacific-Basin Finance Journal is currently edited by K. Chan and S. Ghon Rhee More articles in Pacific-Basin Finance Journal from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.