Posts Tagged "elementary school"
May 24, 2022
Americans Say They Need a Finance Class
For all of Americans’ financial shortcomings, at least we recognize there is a problem.
More than 80 percent of adults believe states should require a personal finance class in high school and wish they’d taken one themselves, according to a March survey by the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE).
Rarely do we see that much agreement on anything, and it indicates people don’t always feel confident about the choices they are making. A famous questionnaire takes the measure of their insecurity: less than a third of people surveyed correctly answered three basic questions about interest rates, inflation, and investment risk.
Of course, people over 60 have more experience, and 92 percent of them think financial education is important. But 79 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds also feel strongly that a financial class should be required for a high school degree. And both men and women agree.
Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much agreement on whether financial education actually does much good. NEFE would like to put forward some new evidence that it does work.
NEFE asked four economists to do a meta-analysis of 76 studies in 33 countries that tested the effectiveness of a wide variety of financial lessons at all ages. In one study, elementary students exhibited more self control after hearing stories that helped them visualize the future. One story was about a girl who explored, through time travel, a choice between buying things now or saving up for a bike. The researchers in another study described workers as effectively “flipping a coin” to decide between a 401(k)-style or Roth retirement account. But after watching videos about the accounts’ different tax consequences, they answered more questions about the accounts correctly.
The researchers’ conclusion: “Financial education improves financial knowledge and financial behaviors.” …
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October 20, 2020
Expect More Moms to Sacrifice Careers
Working mothers scrambled when the schools shut their doors last spring, but they found ways to cope. The 2020-21 school year may push many of them over the edge.
Last spring, one in four women nationwide who’d either quit their jobs or were laid off blamed the difficulties of working after the schools closed or they lost child care to COVID-19, a Northeastern survey found.
Alicia Sasser Modestino is in the midst of repeating the survey but believes that the situation has only gotten harder for working mothers this fall.
“When you look down the barrel of a full school year of hybrid or remote learning,” the stopgap measures mothers deployed last spring “are not sustainable,” said Modestino, a mother of four and research director for Northeastern’s Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy.
“If it’s not going to be Congress giving money for schools to reopen safely or the state opening child care centers, a parent is going to have to give up their job, and we know from history that it’s more likely to be women,” she said.
The impact of school closings on Millennials and Generation X can’t be overstated. In 75 of the 100 largest U.S. school districts, returning to school has meant students connecting to Zoom from their bedrooms or kitchen tables.
In the COVID-19 pandemic, a disproportionate share of women have been laid off, because they dominate face-to-face industries – nursing, retail, customer service – that are more vulnerable to closing. But something new is happening to mothers in this downturn. …Learn More
About Squared Away
Learn more about our blog and its writer, Kimberly Blanton, a former Boston Globe reporter.
