Measuring financial literacy of children aged 4 to 6 years: design and small-scale testing

This project aimed to develop and test a measure of four to six year old children’s financial literacy, defined here as a combination of children’s understanding of concepts connected with money management and finance and their ability to describe their own experiences of situations involving money. In this report, we outline the background to the project and review the research literature on young children’s knowledge, understanding and experience of money and finance. We then discuss our approach to the design of a measure of financial literacy and describe a small-scale evaluation study we conducted using the newly developed measure. Finally, we discuss recommendations for next steps with the measure.