Gender differences in savings over the life cycle: the role of financial literacy

What is your research about?

While the gender earnings gap across developed countries is on average 20%, gender wealth inequality is much higher, and ranges between 45% and 60%. Our project advances the hypothesis that financial literacy could be one of the factors responsible for the gender gap in wealth, as financial knowledge helps individuals accumulate wealth, but women tend to be less financially literate than men. The growing accessibility of saving tools driven by digital advancements, and the fact that pension responsibilities have been shifted from employers to employees, are just two of the many phenomena that highlight the increasing importance of financial knowledge for wealth accumulation.

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How will the Stone Centre grant help your research?

The Stone Centre grant will help us purchase access to the mirco-level data from the Dutch Statistical Office, which contains important information for our project. It builds on national tax filings and includes a very detailed income and wealth decomposition for each member of a given household separately.

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What will you produce as part of your research?

Research-wise, we aim to present our paper at invited seminars to gather feedback, which we will use to write up a working paper. This will then be sent for publication at a suitable economics journal.

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Education-wise, we would like to produce the following materials:

• a new 'How economists learn from facts' on financial literacy, how to measure it, and why it differs significantly across individuals,
• a new 'When economists disagree' on the policies proposed or enacted around the world to promote the closing of the gender wealth gap.
• lecture notes on how to incorporate gender differences within the context of basic consumption-saving frameworks.

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About this grant

Title of the project: Gender differences in savings over the life cycle: the role of financial literacy

Grant value: £25,000

Duration: October 2024 – March 2026

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