Education

US Students Utterly Average In Financial Acumen

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Blake Neff Reporter
Font Size:

New data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) indicates that American students finish behind their international peers when it comes to financial literacy.

The results were the product of a test taken two years ago by some 30,000 15-year-old students in 18 countries. The test was designed to see if students could grasp various aspects of personal finance, such as calculating the balance of a bank account or determining the better of two loan proposals.

On the test, U.S. students averaged 492 points, a smidgen below the OECD average of 500. About 9 percent of U.S. students were top performers able to answer the most complex questions, while nearly 18 percent could not even demonstrate a basic level of proficiency needed to do more than make basic daily purchases.

Countries the U.S. finished behind included Australia, Belgium, Latvia, and even Poland. Finishing on top with an average of over 600 points were Chinese students from the city of Shanghai, which is tested independently of the entire country.

Countries finishing behind the U.S. included France, Israel, Russia, Spain and Italy. Finishing dead last was Colombia, whose students averaged a miserable 379 points, more than 80 points below the next-lowest country.

The U.S.’s result was hardly stellar, but it was also noticeably better than some other recent OECD studies involving American students. On Tuesday, a report indicated that poor students in the U.S. are unlikely to excel academically compared to those in other countries, while last fall the OECD highlighted America’s math performance as significantly below average.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan addressed the results while at an event Wednesday, telling reporters that the nature of the modern economy made financial know-how more important than ever.

“The idea of young people going into the world of work, staying with one job for 40 years, having secure pension and retirement, those jobs are basically gone,” said Duncan. With less security than in the past, Duncan said, students need to pick up abilities that “20 or 30, 40 years ago, maybe [weren’t] applied.”

In Shanghai’s school as well as those of some other high performers, personal finance is a required component of the learning curriculum, but only 19 states in the U.S. mandate require that finance courses be offered in high school.

Follow Blake on Twitter

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Blake Neff

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel