Financial Education and Equality

Financial education is a lifelong process that encompasses the acquisition of knowledge and the development of skills; it broadens abilities that enable effective decisions made throughout important conjunctions of life. Financial education for young children can reduce future social and economic gaps because it assists in making better financial decisions. This research examines the relationships between financial education and the consumption-culture of young children learning in primary schools in Israel (studying in the second, third, and fourth grades); they were classified as either technological or traditional learners. To this end, a special questionnaire designed to examine consumption-culture, consisting of six categories (each category comprises 4–5 questions, with a total of 28 questions), was developed. The validity and reliability of this questionnaire are high (.95 and .9, respectively). This questionnaire was answered by 178 children enrolled in 3 different schools, of which two are located at the geographical periphery and one is located at the center of Israel. In one of these schools, 86 children studied financial education for 1 year (2014/15) and answered the same questionnaire at the end of the year. The questionnaires were analyzed using ANOVA and regression analyses. The findings revealed that students classified more as digital learners have better consumption habits compared with their counterparts classified as more traditional learners. Undergoing financial education strengthens this link. Furthermore, undergoing financial education at the lower grades of primary school improves the consumption habits of young children compared with students not attending financial education classes. Policy implications suggest that increasing students’ exposure to financial education at a young age might improve the consumption-culture of young people. This in turn might lead toward narrowing the social and economic gap in the future.