The financial literacy gender gap and the role of culture

Ute Rink, Yabibal Walle and Stephan Klasen

The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 2021, vol. 80, issue C, 117-134

Abstract: This paper empirically investigates the role of culture in explaining the frequently reported differences in financial literacy between women and men. Using nationally representative survey data from India, we find that women are significantly less financially literate than men. This gender gap is not observable, however, when we only consider matrilineal states. Moreover, matrilineal women are more financially knowledgeable than patriarchal women. Using the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method, we find that education, English language skills and the use of different information sources, such as newspapers and TV, are key transmission channels in explaining differences in financial knowledge between men and women in patriarchal states, and between patriarchal and matrilineal societies.

Keywords: Gender; Financial literacy; Culture; Matrilineal and patriarchal societies; Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D8 O1 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1062976921000351
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: The Financial Literacy Gender Gap and the Role of Culture (2015)
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:eee:quaeco:v:80:y:2021:i:c:p:117-134

DOI: 10.1016/j.qref.2021.02.006

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance is currently edited by R. J. Arnould and J. E. Finnerty

More articles in The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().