RIEB Discussion Paper Series No.2020-08

Title

Financial Literacy and Securities Investments: Based on the Results of "Survey on Wealth Building, Securities Investment and Financial Literacy"

Abstract

Japanese households are reluctant to invest in stocks. In recent times, the Japanese government has established new securities investment schemes such as NISA and iDeCo to aim at the wealth-building of households. According to prior research conducted by van Rooij et al. (2011), how the household conducts securities investments is influenced by the level of financial literacy of the household. The low financial literacy of Japanese households may cause them not to invest in stocks. In order to clarify the situation in Japan, we conducted a questionnaire survey targeting general consumers with the title "Survey on Wealth Building, Securities Investment, and Financial Literacy" in April 2019 and received responses from 1,000 people. We found that people with higher financial literacy are likely to make more stock investments and can obtain higher yields from investment. Furthermore, we found that those with higher financial literacy were also likely to be taking financially desirable actions (such as diversified investment portfolios and implementing life planning).

Keywords

Financial literacy; Securities investment; Survey; Stock participation

Inquiries

Nobuyoshi YAMORI
Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration
Kobe University
E-mail: yamori@rieb.kobe-u.ac.jp

Hitoe UEYAMA
Faculty of Economics, Nagoya Gakuin University