Financial Literacy and Retirement Planning in Australia

Financial literacy and numeracy are closely tied. Furthermore, financial literacy has been shown to relate to important financial behaviors. This study examines the relationship between financial literacy and retirement planning using a measure that includes questions requiring numeracy. We implement a customized survey to a representative sample of 1,024 Australians. Overall, we find aggregate levels of financial literacy similar to comparable countries with the young, least educated, those not employed, and those not in the labor force most at risk. Our financial literacy measure is positively related to retirement planning in our sample.