Does gender matter for the use of learning opportunities? Potential explanation for the gender gap in financial literacy

Abstract

Financial literacy is becoming increasingly important, in particular for adolescents since they are exposed to financial services earlier and earlier. At the same time, empirical studies indicate that male learners show higher financial literacy than women; however, other studies find significant or contrary differences between male and female learners. These partially contradictory results make it necessary to investigate such gender-specific effects in more detail. This article addresses two questions to contribute to the literature on financial literacy: first, in which financial content areas are there significant performance differences between female and male adolescents? Secondly, does the relationship between learning opportunities and financial education differ among pupils? The analyses are based on a sample of 530 secondary students from Germany. The results indicate that female students show higher test results for the financial literacy dimensions money and payments, and insurance, male students perform better regarding the dimensions savings and monetary policy. Furthermore, learning opportunities may contribute differently to the gender gaps. We contribute to the literature by investigating the important question of gender gap for five different dimensions of financial literacy and by showing that different learning opportunities play a role in the development of students’ financial literacy.