The Well-Being and Financial Well-Being of Canadians: financially vulnerable households the most challenged
This brief discusses how more financially vulnerable Canadians are most challenged based on the Seymour Financial Resilience Index TM. This E-Brief builds on Statistics Canada Canadians' Well-being in Year One of the COVID-19 Pandemic report and Seymour’s February 2021 Index Release Summary.
Proposals for a Northern Market Basket Measure and its disposable income
As stated in the Poverty Reduction Act, the Market Basket Measure (MBM) is now Canada’s Official Poverty Line. The Northern Market Basket Measure (MBM-N) is an adaptation of the MBM that reflects life and conditions in two of the territories – Yukon and Northwest TerritoriesNote. As with the MBM, the MBM-N is comprised of five major components: food, clothing, transportation, shelter and other necessities. The MBM-N is intended to capture the spirit of the existing MBM (i.e., represent a modest, basic standard of living) while accounting for adjustments to the contents of the MBM to reflect life in the North. This discussion paper describes a proposed methodology for the five components found in the MBM-N, as well as its disposable income. This discussion paper also provides an opportunity for feedback and comments on the proposed methodology of the MBM-N.
Fearless Woman: Financial Literacy and Stock Market Participation
Women are less financially literate than men. It is unclear whether this gap reflects a lack of knowledge or, rather, a lack of confidence. This survey experiment shows that women tend to disproportionately respond “do not know” to questions measuring financial knowledge, but when this response option is unavailable, they often choose the correct answer. The authors find that about one-third of the financial literacy gender gap can be explained by women’s lower confidence levels. Both financial knowledge and confidence explain stock market participation.
Cash Value: How The Financial Clinic Puts Money into the Pockets of Working Poor Families
Practitioners engaged in the nascent field of financial development lack a shared system of tracking and analyzing customer progress toward financial security. Practice leaders—ranging from direct service organizations such as the Chicago-based LISC to NeighborWorks America of Washington, D.C.—define customer progress by their individual outcomes frameworks. But without uniform outcomes measures to assess our customers’ progress—and thus, our own performance—the field as a whole is handicapped. Many factors contribute to this problem, two being most prominent: organizations are grounded in distinct theories of change, are funded by a variety of sources with their own expectations, and lack of clarity about how to measure aspects of our work.
CPA Canada 2020 Canadian Finance Study
Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada (CPA Canada) has released its comprehensive Canadian Finance Study 2020, which examines people's attitudes and feelings towards their personal finances. The results highlight the new financial realities that Canadians are experiencing during these unprecedented times. Nielsen conducted the CPA Canada 2020 Canadian Finance Study via an online questionnaire, from September 4 to 16, 2020 with 2,008 randomly selected Canadian adults, aged 18 years and over, who are members of their online panel. Among the key pandemic-related findings:
Millennials and money: Financial preparedness and money management practices before COVID-19
Millennials (individuals age 18–37 in 2018) are the largest, most highly educated, and most diverse generation in U.S. history This paper assesses the financial situation, money management practices, and financial literacy of millennials to understand how their financial behaviour has changed over the ten years following the Great Recession of 2008 and the situation they were in on the cusp of the current economic crisis (in 2018) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings from the National Financial Capability Study (NFCS) show that millennials tend to rely heavily on debt, engage frequently in expensive short- and long-term money management, and display shockingly low levels of financial literacy. Moreover, student loan burden and expensive financial decision making increased significantly from 2009 to 2018 among young adults.
Financial literacy and financial resilience: Evidence from around the world
This study presents findings from a measurement of financial literacy using questions assessing basic knowledge of four fundamental concepts in financial decision making: knowledge of interest rates, interest compounding, inflation, and risk diversification. Worldwide, just one in three adults are financially literate—that is, they know at least three out of the four financial concepts. Women, poor adults, and lower educated respondents are more likely to suffer from gaps in financial knowledge.
Launch of the OECD/INFE 2020 International Survey of Adult Financial Literacy
This report provides measures of financial inclusion including elements of financial resilience and a newly-created score on financial well-being. Twenty-six countries and economies, including 12 OECD countries, participated in this international survey of financial literacy, using the 2018 OECD/INFE toolkit to collect cross-comparable data. The survey results report the overall financial literacy scores, as computed following the OECD/INFE methodology and definition, and their elements of knowledge, behaviour, and attitudes. The data used in this report are drawn from national surveys undertaken using and submitted to the OECD as part of a co-ordinated measurement exercise; as well as data gathered as part of the OECD/INFE Technical Assistance Project for Financial Education in South East Europe.
National Strategies for Financial Education: OECD/INFE Policy Handbook
Financial education has become an important complement to market conduct and prudential regulation and improving individual financial behaviours a long-term policy priority in many countries. The OECD and its International Network on Financial Education (INFE) conducts research and develops tools to support policy makers and public authorities to design and implement national strategies for financial education. This handbook provides an overview of the status of national strategies worldwide, an analysis of relevant practices and case studies and identifies key lessons learnt. The policy handbook also includes a checklist for action, intended as a self-assessment tool for governments and public authorities.
G20/OECD INFE Core Competencies Framework on financial literacy for Adults (aged 18+)
This document describes the types of knowledge that adults aged 18 or over could benefit from, what they should be capable of doing and the behaviours that may help them to achieve financial well-being, as well as the attitudes and confidence that will support this process. It can be used to inform the development of a national strategy on financial education, improve programme design, identify gaps in provision, and create assessment, measurement and evaluation tools.
Race, Ethnicity, and the Financial Lives of Young Adults: Exploring Disparities in Financial Health Outcomes
Young adults of color, particularly those who are Black and Latinx, have borne a disproportionate share of economic hardship, as decades of systemic racism have made their communities more vulnerable to the effects of these crises. This report shares new data on the financial lives of young adults, focusing on Black and Latinx young adults, in order to inform policies, programs, and solutions that can improve financial health for all.
The Common Approach
The Common Foundations are a minimum standard for how to do impact measurement without prescribing a particular tool or approach. This can help to overcome a widespread challenge of grantmakers, donors, lenders and investors imposing impact measurement approaches on the social purpose organizations that they give money to. They do this for assurances that the impact measurement is of a sufficient quality and comparability. The Common Foundations solves part of this problem. Funders can require social purpose organizations to demonstrate that the are doing all five essential practices while leaving the social purpose organization to choose which tools and approaches to use. In addition to the quick guide, videos, key documents, and a self-assessment are provided as tools to meet the standard of impact measurement in Canada.
Measuring Financial Capability and Well-Being in Financial Coaching Programs
This brief describes the data collected and lessons gleaned from the Financial Coaching Impact & Evaluation Fellowship, which took place over the course of 10 months in 2017. Ultimately, this brief argues that the Financial Well-Being Scale and the Financial Capability Scale are promising tools for financial capability programs seeking to understand the impact of their programs.
Neighbourhood Financial Health Index: Making the Invisible Visible
In this video presentation Katherine Scott from the Canadian Council on Social Development (CCSD) shares the new Neighbourhood Financial Health Index, a mapping tool which uses composite data about income, assets, debt, and poverty to show levels of financial health at the neighbourhood scale. This presentation was given at the Prosper Canada Policy Research Symposium on March 9, 2018. Read the slide deck that accompanies this presentation. Pour lire les diapositives de la présentation, cliquez ici. View the full video playlist of all presentations from this symposium. Update July 22, 2022: Please note that the Neighbourhood Financial Health Index is no longer available
Financial Capability Scale
The Center for Financial Security (CFS) and Annie E. Casey Foundation have developed a short set of standardized client outcome measures to create the Financial Capability Scale (FCS). In 2011, CFS worked with four organizations to collect data on client outcome measures, with the goal of refining a small set of measures that can be used across programs. The project aimed to increase coordination across organizations so the financial coaching field can improve its capacity to demonstrate client impacts. The findings from the project extend beyond the coaching field and can be applied to other financial capability services.