Financial Literacy under Conditions of Financial Distress - Evidence ...

Financial literacy is considered a life skill for the 21st century. The OECD defines financial literacy as being ‚A combination of awareness, knowledge, skill, attitude and behaviour necessary to make sound financial decisions and ultimately achieve individual financial wellbeing’. The growing body of academic literature documents demography-related illiteracy especially with young as well as old people, women, low income households, and ethnic minorities which seems to be a persistent phenomenon all over the world. Furthermore, research points at proneness of financially illiterate people to over-indebtedness, expensive credit decisions, high risk exposure, bad saving decisions and reluctance to take financial advice.

We present recent evidence on financial literacy from a questionnaire (paper&pencil) based survey of a representative sample of the Carinthian working population (sample N=1.004, response rate 13.5%). Besides financial literacy, the questionnaire includes items on debt literacy, financial behavior as well as items related to the recent distress the State of Carinthia and its population faced due to the bailout of the Hypo-Alpe-Adria Bank and its bad-bank-successor the Heta Asset Resolution.