A conexão entre educação financeira e seguros para jovens na cidade de São Paulo

Abstract

Financial development and financial inclusion policies have sought to offer several financial products and services to the population, such as: credit cards, overdraft facilities, insurance and other sophisticated products. However, the lack of financial education may lead to an ineffective use of financial products, worsening the financial lives of the population. This study aims to analyze the financial education of young people and, specifically, their knowledge and use of insurance products. Based on previously validated questionnaires already used in the literature, I have applied the instrument in two teaching entities, one being a vocational school for young apprentices, and the other a private school, both in the city of São Paulo. There is a total of 191 respondents, aged between 17 and 22 years old. Most of them believe their financial knowledge is weak or intermediate. However, it was verified that their standardized index values in this research was 63,96, showing a depreciation in terms of self-assessment. One third of the respondents could not correctly answer questions related to interest rate, inflation and risk diversification. In the attitude aspect, approximately one third of the respondents showed a myopic attitude in terms of buying in installments and spending money instead of saving for the long run. Women show greater financial dissatisfaction than men. The behavior aspect of financial education received the lowest average of the index (45,90) and recorded that only 47 would have been financial prepared to face an unexpected expense, with the male audience being statistically better prepared than the female. Moreover, we find a lack of interest in the insurance product, and the main reasons are not having an insurable object, the high cost of insurance and not understanding how it works. Based on a reduced form model, I find that only the knowledge index is significantly related to the purchase of insurance products. This suggests that expanding the insurance market to young audiences will require additional efforts, not only to proliferate the insurance product concept, the types available and other specific items, but also to address even the most basic questions of financial knowledge, such as interest rates, inflation and risk diversification.