Personal financial literacy among high school students in New Zealand, Japan and the USA

Personal financial literacy is becoming increasingly important in the modern world, especially for young people. In this article, the authors compare the financial literacy of high school students in Hamilton, New Zealand, with samples from Japan and the USA. The authors compare not only overall financial literacy, but also literacy across five dimensions (or 'themes') of financial literacy and across three cognitive levels. They find that financial literacy is poor overall in all three countries, but is substantially worse in New Zealand and the USA than in Japan. The performance is similar across themes and cognitive levels for US and New Zealand students, but Japanese students perform better mostly in terms of their greater knowledge of terminology and definitions, rather than better comprehension and ability to apply their knowledge. This suggests that all three countries should work harder to develop the financial literacy of their high school students.