An investigation on financial literacy: The Italian case

Abstract

In the recent past a lot of studies have been devoted to analyze people’s financial literacy level. According to the results of such studies, Italy is always at the bottom of the list of all the European countries, with one of the lowest level of financial literacy in Europe (see the Program for International Student Assessment survey) and with the evidence of various gaps concerning the gender and respondents’ regional position. A questionnaire with 30 questions concerning both financial literacy and sociodemographic questions has been proposed to a sample of 105 Italian citizens. The main goal is to measure their level of financial literacy and understand their preferences for an innovative tool to increase it. The result of the survey shows that there exists a gender gap in financial literacy in Italy, but there are not enough elements to say that regional position of respondents matters in the sample. Based on the answers collected, people seems to prefer a website to find out information about finance. This result leads to the proposal of an innovative app connected to the national web site “Quello che conta”, to improve the Italian financial literacy.