The Association between Financial Well-being and Education by Gender

Live Poster Session: https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/99456724355

Abstract: The Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFPB) conducted a survey that asked respondents questions about their financial well-being and then translated these responses into a score from 0-100. This allowed a lot of existing research on the relationship between education and financial well-being to be conducted. Consensus indicates that the relationship between education and income is significant and positive. However, while this relationship is well established, the relationship between education and financial well-being when controlling for gender has seen little attention in current literature. This is surprising given the current difference between the proportion of men and women in finance. It is reasonable to believe that given the underrepresentation of women in finance, the financial well-being score for women would be lower at every given level of education. However, through a multiple regression, it was found that gender does not moderate the relationship between education and financial well-being score. This suggests that many of the skills that allow for elevated levels of financial well-being could be the ones that are learned in higher levels of education and therefore men and women who achieve these levels of education are equally likely to have higher financial well-being scores. This contradicts the prediction that financial well-being skills are learned in finance. Furthermore, this paper serves as a call for further research into the topic to find out what other factors contribute to financial well-being, other than just education.

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