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Gender and Student Achievement in Personal Finance: Evidence from Keys to Financial Success

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International Handbook of Financial Literacy

Abstract

In this chapter, we examine the performance of male and female students participating in a unique and successful high school programme called Keys to Financial Success. After carefully discussing the programme’s characteristics, curriculum and teacher training, we examine the Financial Fitness for Life High School Test (FFFL-HS) results from 965 students enrolled in a one-semester Keys course and discover no gender gap at the overall pre-test level. We find, however, a significant gender gap favouring female students at the overall post-test level, a finding consistent with the results from the norming of the FFFL-HS Test.

The views expressed in this chapter are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia or the Federal Reserve System.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    While K-12 teachers are formally trained for 30 hours during the summer, the Keys authors and project directors remain in contact with the different cohorts during the academic year to provide the teachers with ongoing pedagogical and content support. Supplemental lessons and materials are provided to teachers throughout the year via email, and additional professional development is offered after school one evening every spring to ensure that teachers remain current in the pedagogical content knowledge related to personal finance.

  2. 2.

    For details on the norming of the FFFL-HS Test see Walstad and Rebeck (2005).

  3. 3.

    A separate analysis was conducted to examine whether the mean gain in the Keys students’ personal finance knowledge from pre- to post-test, as measured by the difference in FFFL-HS Test scores, was different for males and females. Overall, female KEYS students gained 25.95 percentage points between the pre-test and the post-test as compared to their male counterparts who gained 24.58 percentage points. This difference is statistically significant at the 1 % level. In the Income standard, female KEYS students exhibited a 2.43 percentage point larger gain from pre-test to post-test than their male counterparts (females gained 27.42 percentage points and males gained 24.99 percentage points.) This difference is statistically significant at the 5 % level. In the Credit standard, female KEYS students gained 29.46 percentage points from pre-test to post-test, while their male counterparts gained 26.15 percentage points. This difference is statistically significant at the 1 % level. However, for the Money Management and Saving and Investing standards, the gains exhibited by females from pre-test to post-test were not statistically different than the gains exhibited by their male counterparts. At the more disaggregated concept level, the differences between the pre-test to post-test gains exhibited by the males and the females in the Keys sample were not statistically significant. Together, these results reveal some evidence that while both male and female students gain substantially from pre-test to post-test in their personal finance knowledge, the Keys to Financial Success course overall seems to have a larger effect on the knowledge of female students.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, USA

    Andrew T. Hill

  2. Department of Economics, University of Delaware, 102 Alfred Lerner Hall, Newark, DE 19716, USA

    Carlos J. Asarta

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  1. Andrew T. Hill
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  2. Carlos J. Asarta
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Correspondence to Carlos J. Asarta .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Friedrich Schiller University Jena , Jena, Germany

    Carmela Aprea

  2. Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany

    Eveline Wuttke

  3. Johannes Gutenberg Unversity Mainz, Mainz, Germany

    Klaus Breuer

  4. National Institute of Education Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Noi Keng Koh

  5. University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom

    Peter Davies

  6. Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Wien, Austria

    Bettina Greimel-Fuhrmann

  7. California State University, East Bay, Long Beach, California, USA

    Jane S. Lopus

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Hill, A.T., Asarta, C.J. (2016). Gender and Student Achievement in Personal Finance: Evidence from Keys to Financial Success . In: Aprea, C., et al. International Handbook of Financial Literacy. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0360-8_35

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0360-8_35

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-0358-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-0360-8

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