Measuring the Financial Literacy of the Adult Population: The Experience of Banca D’Italia

Machine Learning and Financial Literacy: An Exploration of Factors Influencing Financial Knowledge in Italy

“…Financial attitude instead evaluated personal traits such as preferences, beliefs, and non-cognitive skills, which are likely to affect personal well-being, on a scale from 0 to 5; the main driver of the index is a positive saving orientation, mainly for the long term. Because Di Salvatore et al (2018) found that "the response behavior of Italian respondents appears to be influenced by the survey mode" (p. 8), we also included in our estimates a dummy variable to identify if the responder had a face-to-face interview or used a tablet to record their responses (in Appendix A, Table A1 provides a full description of the variables considered). It is clear from the first descriptive statistics in Table 1 that the level of FL is not uniform throughout the population in Italy.…”

“…We concentrate on Italy because is a negative outlier among the most advanced economies considering the level of financial competencies of adults (Klapper et al 2015;Di Salvatore et al 2018). According to the Standard & Poor's Ratings Services Global Financial Literacy Survey (S&P Global FinLit Survey), only 37 per cent of adult Italians correctly understand basic financial concepts, compared with 52 per cent on average in the EU.…”

“…Thus, the financial knowledge score in Italy is 3.5 out of a maximum of 7 points on average, compared with a G20 average of 4.3. According to Di Salvatore et al (2018), the lower level of financial knowledge in Italy can be explained by the higher share of individuals with low levels of education, in fact "about 47 per cent of the adult Italian population has a primary level of education, while the same group accounts for only 14 per cent of the population in Germany and does not exceed 10 per cent in Canada and the UK" (p. 9). We can add that Italy has also higher unemployment rates than most of the countries compared in Figure 1.…”

The role of national culture in financial literacy:Cross‐countryevidence

“…There are multiple reasons to do so. First, the OECD/INFE definition of financial literacy (consisting of knowledge, behavior and attitudes) recently received criticism in the literature (di Salvatore et al ., 2018). One of the criticisms relates to the fact that a composite indicator of the three sub‐dimensions of financial literacy might be prone to double counting as knowledge and behavior are usually strongly correlated.…”

Promoting financial literacy among the elderly: Consequences on confidence

“…While the impact of an intervention on financial literacy is of common interest, confidence and overconfidence also constitute important aspects (Brugiavini et al, 2018). In particular, evidence shows that lower financial inclusion is associated with a lower level of self-assessed financial literacy (lower investments, lower access to debt, and lower appeal for pension plans; see Di Salvatore et al (2018)). Hence, it is important to assess whether financial literacy interventions help increasing individuals' levels of confidence.…”