EFFECTS OF NUMERACY AND FINANCIAL LITERACY ON UNDESIRABLE FINANCIAL AND RELATED ACADEMIC OUTCOMES IN COLLEGE STUDENTS

Abstract

Numeracy was a better predictor of financial delinquency than financial literacy. The relationship between numeracy and undesirable academic effects was fully mediated by financial delinquency. It was also found that in a credit card related decision making task, the relationship between numeracy and performance was partially mediated by the deliberation time. This is similar to the finding in Ghazal et al. (2014) and supporting their conclusion that numeracy is just not facility with numbers, but also related directly to heuristic deliberation and metacognition. The findings also support the notion that people low in numeracy might be prone to various biases and fallacies that might lead to deleterious financial behavior and attitudes.