Saving Habits of High-School Students Associated with Their Future Retirement As Financial Literacy Topics

Abstract

A wide variety of studies have pointed to the relevance of saving at an early age and how an adequate financial culture can generate efficient resource management, meeting the needs of the individual in the future during his or her old age. Derived from this reflection, the purpose of this study is to describe the current state of financial literacy presented by high school students in the Mexican Southeast and how this impacts their retirement savings habits. A non-probabilistic sample of 343 students was analyzed and a test designed by BANAMEX-UNAM (2008) was used to evaluate saving topics, knowledge about retirement, budgets, habits about the use and origin of their resources. Among the most important findings highlights that, in very few cases, savings refer to future projections and a large part of the population analyzed is unaware of basic concepts such as retirement age and institutions for retirement. In addition, evidence was obtained indicating that there is no dependence between gender and information on pensions, in terms of having heard about pensions, understanding pensions and knowing the institution and the age of retirement. Finally, we suggest to carry out a research to compare the level of financial literacy in young Mexicans and its relationship with parental banking, preferably in the southeast and other regions of Mexico.