Understanding the Gender Gap in Economic Literacy – Evidence from Germany

Lucy Haag, Luis Oberrauch, Taiga Brahm and Martin Biewen

EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Abstract: Economic literacy has far-reaching consequences on savings and investments and ultimately affects individual financial well-being. Several studies report a gender difference in economic literacy in favor of males, disadvantaging women and posing a threat to gender equality. However, there is limited evidence addressing the factors underlying the gender gap. Using a representative sample of German high school students (N=1,958), we investigate gender differences in students’ economic literacy. Additionally, we examine potential explanatory factors for the gap that have been reported in previous studies focusing more narrowly on financial literacy and personal finance. Results confirm a substantial gender gap in economic literacy favoring boys (0.25 SD). Regression models and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analyses reveal math ability and interest in economics as important drivers for the gender gap. Self-efficacy and risk aversion are further factors accounting for the gap while most socialization variables appear to have little relevance. Including effort as a control variable increases the gap, suggesting that the gap may have been underestimated in previous studies that did not consider this factor. Our study provides important implications for policy interventions to mitigate the gender gap in economic literacy.

Keywords: Economic Literacy; Gender Gap (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-fle and nep-gen
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/308430/1/U ... conomic-Literacy.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:zbw:esprep:308430

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().