Financial knowledge in children with preeconomic thinking in public and private schools, Sincelejo - Colombia

Abstract

Financial education is necessary for children to foster skills that guarantee the achievement of personal economic goals when they are adults. The purpose of this research is to analyze the level of financial knowledge in children up to 7 years of age, in two educational institutions in the city of Sincelejo in Colombia: one official and one private. To achieve this, a panel was conducted with two groups of 14 students in each institution, which made it possible to carry out a qualitative analysis and the application of the Mann-Whitney U test to establish possible differences between the groups. The findings reveal a greater financial knowledge in terms of budgets and savings, than in the subjects of credits and the financial system; as well as that there are no statistically significant differences between the mean values of the responses in the two institutions, even though greater ease and security were observed in the explanations given by the children of the private institution who receive financial education. It is concluded that greater efforts should be made in financial education of children, incorporating the corresponding subjects in their study plans, without ignoring the important educational role of the family environment.