Family Financial Security Symposium

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Financial Literacy, Evidence from the Cusp of Retirement

Jason S. Seligman, John Glenn School of Public Affairs, Ohio State University
Jason S. Seligman, John Glenn School of Public Affairs, Ohio State University

Jason Seligman presented this paper at the Family Financial Security Symposium in April, 2010.

Following a survey of employees estimated to be one year from retirement Seligman analyzed responses to a twelve item financial literacy quiz relating scores to evidence of planning exercises, self-assessed proficiency with economics, education, wealth, IRA ownership and a battery of demographic controls.  He find evidence of difficulty self-assessing understanding of economics and concepts related to financial literacy.

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Debt Literacy, Financial Experiences, and Overindebtedness

Annamaria Lusardi,
Annamaria Lusardi

This paper by Annamaria Lusardi & Peter Tufano, which was presented at the Family Financial Security Symposium hosted by CFS in April, 2010, analyzes a national sample of Americans with respect to their debt literacy, financial experiences, and their judgments about the extent of their indebtedness.  Debt literacy is measured by questions testing knowledge of fundamental concepts related to debt and by self-assessed financial knowledge.

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Discounting and Defaulting: Evidence from Time Preference Experiments and Administrative Credit Data

debt-clipart-aTeK6aRqcThis paper was presented by Stephan Meier and Charles Sprenger at the Family Financial Security Symposium in April, 2010.  If defaulting is a decision in which consumers weigh the present benefits of not having to repay their debts against the future costs of potentially being excluded from financial markets or stigmatized, individual time preferences should be a key determinant of defaulting.  This paper links experimentally measured differences in time preferences to objectively measured differences in defaulting behavior.

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