Journal of Family and Economic Issues最新文献

Financial planning plays a key role in shaping marital satisfaction. Using response surface analysis (RSA), which is based on polynomial regression models, this study investigated the relationship between financial planning discrepancy and marital satisfaction by a sample of 246 couples (492 participants). The study found that the greater the perceived discrepancy in couples’ financial planning, the lower their marital satisfaction. Additionally, the individual’s attachment type played a moderating role in the relationship between financial planning discrepancy and marital satisfaction. For individuals with insecure attachment types, the impact of financial planning discrepancy on marital satisfaction was greater. This study expands the research field of financial literacy at a theoretical level and extends the research scope of response surface analysis. On a practical level, it provides a new perspective for enhancing marital satisfaction.

This study uses the theories of financial tool-kits and family financial socialization to examine the messages Black women received about money from their caregivers during their childhoods. Prior studies show there are race and gender wealth gaps due to structural factors and that there is stratification by race and gender in financial knowledge and behavior outcomes. This study explores how Black families socialize their daughters about money and how this shapes their financial knowledge and behavior in middle adulthood. I use interviews with 28 Black women to demonstrate the content and methods Black parents used during participant’s upbringings to teach them about money management. I found women elders play a significant role in developing participants’ financial skills and knowledge. They do this primarily through modeling and experiential learning while direct communication was used for lessons on combining resources with a romantic partner. The findings show how Black families transfer the financial knowledge they have to prepare the next generation while operating under the constraints of financial exclusion.

Time pressure is common among working parents with adverse consequences for parent and child mental health, yet few studies investigate time pressure beyond the early parenting years. This paper examined the work and family drivers of time pressure, and the work supports that ease time pressure, in employed parents of adolescents (youngest child aged 13–18 years). In 2016, 614 Australian parents of adolescents completed an online survey about work-family balance. Over half of fathers and three quarters of mothers reported feeling time pressed. Multivariable logistic regression revealed that fathers with managerial/professional jobs and single mothers had increased odds of time pressure. Greater family supportive supervisor behaviour was associated with decreased odds of time pressure, as was greater work-family enrichment (fathers only). Findings indicate that time pressure is a salient experience for parents of adolescents and that work-family support is needed beyond early parenting.

The articles in this special issue begin to explore the political and economic contexts of families’ financial lives and their undergirding oppressive systems. Scholarly literature tends to explain families’ experiences with money and finances from individual-level perspectives, such as studying the downstream consequences of borrowing too much money. In our introduction to this special issue, we describe how the enclosed articles encourage different vantage points—ones that provide more systems- or structural-level explanations such as White supremacy and racial violence, settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and heteropatriarchy. Overall, the articles in this special issue expand the aperture for investigations into families’ financial lives and offer generative directions for future scholarship.

Scholars have found that among emerging adults, financial barrier beliefs about marriage—like believing financial independence should be achieved prior to marriage—appear to be common. Despite the prevalence of beliefs about finances regarding marriage readiness, scholars have not established whether and how these financial barrier beliefs about marriage predict emerging adults’ debt and assets over time. Through the lens of marital paradigms theory, we sought to address this gap by examining whether and how the initial level and changes in financial barrier beliefs about marriage predict changes in young emerging adults’ debt and assets across four waves of data from 1,033 young U.S. emerging adults. We found that, on average, financial barrier beliefs about marriage increased, assets were relatively stable, and debt increased over the early years of emerging adulthood. We also found that increases in emerging adults’ agreement with financial barrier beliefs like ‘finances are a barrier to marriage’ over time were associated with a decrease in assets over time. However, neither the initial level nor changes in financial barrier beliefs about marriage predicted changes in debt over time. In short, our findings provide some evidence that beliefs like a certain amount of money should be saved before marriage, somewhat paradoxically, do not appear to help young emerging adults build their assets.

The financial conversations parents/caregivers have with their children play a pivotal role in their financial development. Yet, little is known about strategies or interventions to promote these financial conversations. Focusing on parents/caregivers of middle school students in a Midwestern state, this exploratory study investigated the experiences of parents/caregivers who engage in financial conversations with their middle schoolers. We developed and tested “Money Talks”, an online series of financial literacy modules to enhance parent–child financial conversations. Using qualitative interview data of 10 parents/caregivers as well as baseline, module, and follow-up survey data of up to 318 parents/caregivers, we examined the predictors of financial conversations and the impact of the modules on increasing both frequency and parents’ confidence for engaging in financial conversations. Five key financial conversation topics emerged from parent/caregiver interviews including spending, banking, saving/investing, credit/debt, and financial decision-making. In surveys, confidence about financial topics emerged as the most important predictor of financial conversations. The follow-up survey results point to a greater amount of time spent on financial conversations rather than more frequent conversations and demonstrate that the modules were most effective in “Starting a conversation” with their middle schooler. Future research should experiment with different online and offline approaches for engaging parents/caregivers in financial conversations with their children and promoting other financial socialization methods such as financial modeling and experiential learning.

This paper examines how family financial socialization in adulthood is linked to the development of investment literacy among individual family members within the context of innovative financial services, specifically peer-to-peer (P2P) lending. Our findings revealed that P2P lending investors engage in a moderate level family financial socialization suggesting that family, as a key financial socialization agent in childhood and adolescence, maintains its role in adulthood. Additionally, such investors possess a high-level investment knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Explicit family financial socialization has a significant and positive effect on the individuals’ investment knowledge, skills, and attitudes, while the effect of implicit financial socialization is significant but negative for knowledge and attitudes. Such findings suggest that family discussion among adult members result in higher, while observations of family members’ investment behavior led to lower investment literacy. Our study found no significant moderating effect of the strength of social ties indicating that dynamics of family relations neither strengthen nor weaken proximal socialization outcomes. The analysis of differences across demographic groups unveiled statistically significant distinctions concerning respondents’ gender, income, and education. These results provide important insights for stakeholders, underscoring the significant role family socialization in adulthood plays in shaping individuals’ investment literacy, particularly of those investing on P2P lending platforms.

Guided by the knowledge-behavior-opportunity approach to financial capability (Xiao et al., 2022), our study explored whether financial dependence on parents and/or the belief that parents will rescue them from debt moderated the relationship between usage of alternative financial services and financial anxiety among emerging adults, primarily college students. Data came from responses from 209 students taking a financial assessment survey pre- and post-test as part of a Consumer Economics course taught at a public university in the Southeastern United States. We found that both financial dependence and beliefs of parental rescue were related negatively to financial anxiety in separate models. Beliefs of parental rescue also moderated this relationship. However, when combined in the same model, only beliefs of parental rescue remained negatively related to financial anxiety. Implications are discussed.

Lone parenthood is one of the multiple accepted family types that make up today’s societies. In Europe, 3.2% of total households were single adults with children in 2019. Understanding the socioeconomic and demographic transformations that have led to the relatively high rates of single-parent families have attracted the attention and concern of researchers and policy makers. This study contributes to the literature by exploring trends in and predictors of health outcomes, lifestyle factors (obesity, smoking and alcohol) and social support among single-parent families and cohabiting couples in 20 European countries. To do so, microdata from the European Health Interview Survey-EHIS (2013–2015 and 2018–2020) is used. Running multivariate logistic regressions, we estimate the impact of individual factors associated with single parents’ health status, lifestyle factors and social support, adjusting by demographic characteristics and stressors. Our analysis suggests that both single mothers and fathers are left behind in several respects compared to their couple counterparts: lower education levels, lower income and worse economic conditions, worse physical health, and poorer social support relationships. Differences in health status, lifestyle factors and social support between single and couple parents, both mothers and fathers could be associated with the unequal distribution of demographic and stress factors found in this article. Understanding these characteristics of single-parent families could enable the establishment of community-level interventions to mitigate the adverse effects of lone parenthood and their children.

Research on time poverty is nascent, and has focused more on unpaid household production and gender differences. Using survey data of 1,620 workers aged 21 to 38 in Singapore, we found that work-based time poverty affects the psychological well-being of young workers. First, factor analysis of time-related work quality indices led to a work-based time poverty measure along two dimensions: (i) long and late working hours, and (ii) nonstandard and uncontrollable working hours. Then, through a structural equation model, we found that individuals in low-wage work are more time poor in terms of nonstandard and uncontrollable hours. These hours worsen work-to-family conflict and together, they mediate the relationship between low wage and two psychological well-being outcomes: generalised anxiety disorder and self-efficacy. Our findings have implications on low-wage young workers’ ability to invest time in their families and on training. They suggest the need to work with policymakers and employers to address workplace time poverty challenges that are beyond what young workers themselves can control.