On the 15th of April, 2015, at the annual Scottish Economics Society (held in Perth, Scotland), Professor Robert Wright (University of Strathclyde) and Urban Big Data Centre researcher Dr Catherine Lido (University of Glasgow) presented a paper series, including the work of UBDC Co-I Professor Mike Osborne (University of Glasgow) and Dr Georgios Panos (University of Glasgow), regarding financial literacy.

Professor Wright, from the University of Strathclyde led the session with a talk surrounding ‘Financial Literacy and Attitudes Towards Immigration’, where he introduced the emerging field of financial literacy (as more than simply numeracy) and presented data from the British Election Study to examine its association with a variety of demographic factors and societal attitudes.  Prof Wright concluded that financial literacy has political implications, including but not limited to, Scottish Independence issues, EU-exit attitudes and voting for parties that promise to lower immigration.

Dr Lido, from the University of Glasgow’s Urban Big Data Centre, presented on her work with Prof Osborne on the integrated Multi-media City Data Project (iMCD). She introduced this 1500 ongoing household survey of the Greater Glasgow area, which assesses various attitudes, behaviours and literacies, including financial literacy. She discussed how this novel and open dataset (including GPS trails and ‘Lifelogging’ pictures) might help to identify areas of Glasgow with financial literacy strengths and weaknesses, and target interventions to promote literacies and subsequently positive life outcomes.

The final talk was delivered by Prof Wright, on behalf of Dr Panos (also of the University of Glasgow), on the topic of ‘The Seeds of Financial Literacy’. Financial literacy data for young adults (11-18) across 55 schools in Scotland was presented, and the persistent gender gap in literacy was highlighted, alongside age (S2 and S5 being years of increased FL) and nationality/ ethnicity effects (whereby non-UK respondents score lower). Family background and health implications of these findings were discussed.

Overall, the paper series was well-attended and many networking links were made for research collaborations in the emerging area of financial literacy research.

If you are interested in further research on financial literacy, or using the iMCD data we are collecting, please contact [email protected].