Title: Economics literacy in children: the effects of the socio-economic context

Authors: Celeste Varum; Abigail Ferreira

Addresses: Department of Economics, Management and Industrial Engineering, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal ' Department of Economics, Management and Industrial Engineering, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal

Abstract: The purpose of this research is to examine students' understanding and interest about economics. We furthermore explore the impact of students' family and school contexts, and their individual characteristics, on their understanding of economic issues. The data is based on a questionnaire collected from 587 Portuguese children. The results show that children have limited knowledge about economic issues (58% of correct answers), with high variability in what concerns their understanding of economic issues. Nonetheless, children show interest on economic issues and on learning more about it. The empirical results reveal that home (family) contextual variables (interaction between children and parents and parents' job) and school level variables (class level and class size) explain much of the difference in terms of knowledge about economics.

Keywords: economics understanding; economic literacy; household context; children; socio-economics; family context; school context; Portugal.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPEE.2014.062393

International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education, 2014 Vol.5 No.1, pp.40 - 57

Published online: 05 Jul 2014 *

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