A Study of Financial Socialization in Life Course Context

Abstract

Although researchers have suggested that financial socialization should be studied using a life course approach, they have offered inadequate research frameworks for studying financial socialization over time. This article offers the life course paradigm (LCP) as a multitheoretical conceptual research framework, within which socialization research in other disciplines has been integrated in recent decades. It derives a financial socialization model from the general conceptual LCP and uses a large-scale national online survey to test the model’s hypothesized relationships across three age groups of 813 adult consumers. Results offer insights into the financial socialization processes, underscoring the importance of various formal, informal, and commercial agents of change as well as contextual factors in the development of financial-related attitudes, skills, and habits at different stages in a person’s life. The article shows how researchers can employ the LCP, which has been increasingly used across disciplines and internationally, as a blueprint to conduct further studies.