Abstract
The study tested a model of first-year university students’ financial socialization focusing on parents as financial socialization agents and students’ present financial outcomes. Results from 395 Austrians (70% females) and 412 Slovenes (55% females) revealed significant pathways from recollected socialization experiences to students’ self-perceived financial learning outcomes (adopting parental role modeling and financial knowledge) and financial behavior control. Financial knowledge and behavioral control partly mediated the effect of prior socialization experiences on students’ financial behavior, financial relationship with parents, and financial satisfaction. Among country-specific pathways, adopting parental role modeling indirectly influenced financial outcomes in the Slovene students, whereas for the Austrian students, it was directly associated with better financial relationships with parents. Our findings on the pathways to healthy financial outcomes provide important suggestions to parents and emerging adult students.
Highlights
Financial decisions nowadays are more complex for young generations than in the past (Lusardi & Mitchell, 2014) and are likely to have considerable consequences for individuals’ life pathways, well-being, and wealth
This study aimed to extend our knowledge on the pathways from parental financial socialization toward students’ healthy financial outcomes to contexts other than the United States by selecting two European countries, which differ in their social welfare system and transition to adulthood
Few modest associations in Slovenia were not statistically significant in Austria, whereas socioeconomic status (SES) was linked to financial relationship with parents, and adopting parental financial role modeling in Austria, but not in Slovenia
Summary
Financial decisions nowadays are more complex for young generations than in the past (Lusardi & Mitchell, 2014) and are likely to have considerable consequences for individuals’ life pathways, well-being, and wealth. Increasingly more young people in Western societies prolong their education and delay overtaking adult roles than decades ago, which provides them an extended period of identity exploration in different areas (Arnett, 2000), including the financial domain. Social welfare systems, and cultural norms, reaching financial self-sufficiency for young people differs across macro-systems and brings about diverse ways of attaining financial independence—an important developmental task of becoming adult. Differences in macro-systems (e.g., social policies toward family and youth) contribute to different models of the transition to adulthood (Arnett, 2015; Zupancic & Sirsch, 2018; Zukauskiene, 2016). The two participating countries in our study presently differ in their social welfare systems and transitions to adulthood
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