Financial Literacy Gap: Annamaria Lusardi, Compound Interest and Fraud

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

A Canadian survey on financial stress found that choosing investments ranked as more stressful than going to the dentist. The episode traces how financial literacy has been redefined, with bodies like the OECD treating it as knowledge, skills, behaviors and attitudes rather than arithmetic. Researcher Annamaria Lusardi distinguishes subjective literacy, what people think they know, from objective literacy, what they can show on a test, and finds people consistently rate themselves higher than they score. A 2023 OECD survey of 68,000 adults in 39 countries produced an average score of 60 out of 100, and only 34 percent reached the minimum target of 70.

Education does help: a 2022 meta-analysis by Kaiser and colleagues covering 76 randomized experiments and over 160,000 people found meaningful effects on behavior, and a 2026 Council for Economic Education survey counts 39 U.S. states requiring personal finance coursework to graduate, with Utah setting the highest bar. The critical financial literacy movement argues such courses can justify shifting risk from institutions to individuals. The episode then turns to digital financial literacy, fraud, and creative outreach in the UK, Mongolia and France.

• In the OECD survey, 84 percent understood inflation but only 42 percent answered a basic compound interest question correctly.
• In a 2005 Australian survey, 67 percent claimed to understand compound interest, but only 28 percent solved a practical problem.
• A British Columbia Securities Commission study of over 2,200 investors in a fraud case found near-retirees without adequate resources and affluent middle-aged men among the most vulnerable.
• In Mongolia, where 80 percent cited television as their main information source, financial lessons were woven into soap operas and serial dramas.
• France opened the Cité de l'Économie in 2019, a museum on economics funded by the Banque de France and education ministries.