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Financial Literacy of Young Australians

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A significant number of Australians struggle to manage their money, and one in three people find dealing with money stressful and overwhelming (ASIC, 2018). Increasingly complex financial choices and products bring a need for consumers to be empowered with knowledge...

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Laura de Zwaan (PhD) lecturer, Finance and Financial Planning, Griffith University and Tracey West (PhD) lecturer, Finance and Financial Planning, Griffith Business School.

11 May 2026

1 min read

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A significant number of Australians struggle to manage their money, and one in three people find dealing with money stressful and overwhelming (ASIC, 2018).

Increasingly complex financial choices and products bring a need for consumers to be empowered with knowledge and to understand the consequences of their financial decisions.

The first National Financial Literacy Strategy set the foundation for “using educational pathways to build financial literacy for all Australians” (ASIC, 2011, page 6).

The second National Financial Literacy Strategy set the first priority to ‘educate the next generation, particularly through the formal education system’, which resulted in financial literacy education being formally integrated across Australia’s network of approximately 9,500 schools (Blue et al., 2014).

Despite this strategy, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests of 15-year-old school students show a decline in average financial literacy scores from 526 in 2012 to 504 in 2017.