Educating Adolescents With Economic and Financial Knowledge

Economies impact a person’s livelihood, their qualities of living, and even their well-being, and this applies to people of all ages, regardless of their social contributions. Adolescents have been found to have a generally lower level of knowledge about economies and inequalities within it. Their behaviors and decision-making are affected by how they perceive the inner workings of the economy, and more often than not, their knowledge and behaviors are carried until well into their adulthood. This underlines the need to educate adolescents with economic and financial knowledge they can practically use in their lives, so that they can continue to contribute to society as well-functioning adults.
Because of media representations and predominant concerns being raised in society, adolescents have an imbalanced level of knowledge about wealth and poverty. They appear to have more knowledge about wealth and how it is obtained rather than povery and its implications (Flanagan et al., 2014). Furthermore, adolescents have ideas of the importance of money, education, and occupational prestige, work values, and family life, but this is limited to how optimistic the adolescents are about the future (Martin-Storey et al., 2018). Despite the possible benefits of adolescents’ positive perceptions on money and the economy, there remains to be the concern for how they can use their knowledge on money. Griskevicius et al. (2013) state that people who are...