YEREVAN, JULY 9, ARMENPRESS:  In the first ever international assessment of financial nous among the young, China’s most populous city leads the field “by a wide margin” compared with teenagers in the US, France, Italy, Australia and elsewhere, informs “Armenpress”, in reference to Financial Times.

The study was made by the OECD, the club of mostly rich nations, which tested 15-year-olds on basic financial concepts such as bank accounts, savings rates, managing finances and tax.

Shanghai teens clocked a mean score of 603 points, 103 above the OECD average and 62 points ahead of the next best performer, Flemish Belgium. Five other economies – Estonia, Australia, New Zealand, Czech Republic and Poland – were above average, with the US, France, Spain and Italy falling below.

The research revealed a worrying lack of knowledge in the young about elementary money matters. More than 15 per cent performed “below the baseline level of proficiency” on the simplest financial ideas, such as an interest rate.

Andreas Schleicher, OECD education and skills director, said 15-year-olds showed a disappointing ignorance of concepts that “are not rocket science”.

“If you don’t understand what the long-term liability of an interest rate is for you, you’re much more likely to get ripped off with your credit card. Fifteen years of learning ought to get you to that kind of level,” he said at an event to launch the study in London.

Financial literacy had become “an essential life skill” as globalization and digital technologies made financial services both more complex and more easily accessible, the study said. Governments were increasingly devolving financial responsibility for life-changing decisions, such as further education or retirement, to individuals.

Across five levels of understanding, the study found that only one in 10 students in OECD countries were proficient at the top band, which required them to analyze financial products and solve harder financial problems. In Shanghai, 43 per cent of students achieved this level; in Italy it was attained by just 2 percent.

The two biggest factors behind the stronger performing groups were their pure mathematical ability – where Chinese children score highly – and whether they had personal experience of finance, such as having a bank account, managing money or paying for phone credits. These findings suggested the greatest improvements might arise from more maths teaching – rather than financial literacy lessons