Evaluation of financial literacy of rural households: a case study of tomato farmers in Ghana

Abstract

Financial literacy has been described as an important a mix of knowledge, skill and attitude of individuals, households and even whole nations towards financial matters. It helps to make informed financial decisions, thereby ensuring financial stability, vis-à-vis, economic well-being of the decision maker. Globally, studies in the area of financial literacy have been conducted with the aim of measuring the level of financial literacy of respondents. The results of most of these studies have brought to the fore the poor level of financial literacy among even educated people. The present study evaluates the financial literacy of 562 tomato farmers randomly sampled from three key tomato growing regions in Ghana. Their financial literacy level was evaluated based on their opinions on five basic financial information regularly asked questions by OECD’s International Network on Financial Education. To ascertain the level of agreement among the respondents in their rankings of the financial literacy items, Kendall’s Coefficient of Concordance (Kendall’s W) was estimated. A ranking analysis of the respondents’ responses on the basic financial information indicated that “It is important that one should have a regular savings plan” was ranked as the most important information on financial literacy. Finally, by means of a binary logistic regression, the study went further to determine the tomato farmers’ view on this all-important financial management tool premised on the fact that they viewed financial literacy as important to them thus availing themselves for financial literacy programmes to enhance their financial skills. The results of the binary logistic regression indicate that income diversification significantly influenced a farmer’s view of financial literacy being important whilst farm size and years of education had negative but significant relationship on their view. The study has therefore confirmed the lack of interest of financial literacy among rural households particularly due to their low level of education.