Understanding Financial Literacy among University Students in Afghanistan: The Role of Demographic and Academic Characteristics

This cross-sectional study explored financial knowledge, financial behaviour and financial attitude of 150 purposively selected students from three universities of Afghanistan. Differences based on gender, field of study, age, academic standing, academic performance, university affiliation, and housing arrangement were examined using descriptive statistics, independent-samples t-test, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) as appropriate. In comparative terms, the management and commerce students appeared to have a much higher score than others in knowledge of finances and financial behaviour. Financial behaviour and financial attitude also varied considerably between universities and had a small effect size. No significant differences were found between the three-dimensional sub-scores by gender, age, academic standing, academic performance or housing arrangement. The results are obtained from the non-normal significance tests and must be interpreted with caution. They recommend the importance of financial education programmes that combine conceptual learning, practical financial skills, and positive financial attitudes, but fail to analyse the effectiveness of these programmes. The results are only valid for the selected sample and no causal connections are made.