Objective knowledge measured by performance on a financial quiz rose five percent," she said.ĪPLUS researchers studied how individual financial styles developed in the cohort, including the degree to which young adults relied on parents or themselves to guide their financial decisions and how financial style affects financial capability. "Students also are smarter about finances in general compared to previous waves of the study.
"We are able to show causal linkages between repeated financial education and higher levels of good financial behaviors such as tracking expenses, paying credit cards in full and saving money each month," said Soyeon Shim, director of the Norton School and the lead researcher on APLUS. In this latest round, researchers surveyed more than 1,500 students and drop-outs four years after they entered the UA in the fall of 2007. These findings come from the third wave of a landmark study, Arizona Pathways for Life Success in University Students, or APLUS. The Norton School researchers have bundled them into three categories: pathfinders, followers and drifters.Īlso, parents, more than any other factor, exert the most influence over their children when it comes to developing positive financial attitudes and behaviors â 1.5 times more than continuing financial education and more than twice as much as what young people hear from their friends. Young adults also begin to display their own distinct financial identities that reflect varying degrees of parental influence and autonomy. In fact, researchers at the UA Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences documented a "snowball effect" that these early efforts exponentially increase the likelihood that students will pursue more financial education as time goes on, including informal learning through books, magazines and seminars. New research from the University of Arizona shows that high school and college students who are exposed to cumulative financial education show an increase in financial knowledge, which in turn drives increasingly responsible financial behavior as they become young adults.Â