Introduction

Women are less financially literate than men. But does this gap reflect a lack of knowledge or a lack of confidence? To find out Maria Demertzis, deputy director of Bruegel is joined by Annamaria Lusardi, Professor of Economics and Accountancy at the George Washington University and non-resident fellow at Bruegel and Maarten van Rooij, senior economist at the Dutch Central Bank in The Sound of Economics.

Annamaria and Maarten explain their findings in a recently published paper that about one-third of the financial literacy gender gap can be explained by women’s lower confidence levels.

Relevant publication:
Bucher-Koenen F., R. Alessie, A. Lusardi and M. Rooij (2021) ‘Fearless woman: financial literacy and stock market participation’.