Learning to fail: resilience and the empty promise of financial literacy education

Abstract

Abstract:The requirement to build economic resilience in people has become a concern for the UK Government, regulators, and the financial services industry. Transposed to the realm of financial literacy education, the resilience doctrine performs particular effects in relation to the naturalisation and individualisation of financial market relations. At the same time, it tends to speak of the inevitability of market failures and crashes. I argue that based on these features the effect of the resilience doctrine is to mask the "empty promise" of financial literacy education programmes: the irreconcilable gap between the empowerment discourse surrounding what such agendas are meant to achieve for ordinary people and the latter's actual success in securing their security and wellbeing through financial markets. The paradoxical element of resilience talk is that it at once serves to further legitimise financial education attempts, while providing an opportune reason for failures judged even on its own terms.

A Feminist Moral-Political Economy of Uneven Reform in Austerity Britain: Fostering Financial and Parental Literacy

“…In this context vulnerability is made into a regulatory tool to identify social groups and communities in special need of regulatory intervention (Atkinson et al 2006;Habschick et al 2007;Atkinson & Messy 2012). Financial literacy education (FLE) is a coordinated policy objective developed at the OECD and adopted in the UK, which according to Clarke (2015), creates an "irreconcilable gap" between the empowerment discourse of financial literacy for ordinary people and the actual success of ordinary people in achieving security and wellbeing through financial markets (258). Moreover, state-sponsored financial literacy programs naturalise highly gendered form of financial knowledge and expertise.…”

Os sujeitos endividados e a Educação Financeira

“…Para Clarke (2015), a Educação Financeira é uma promessa vazia, tendo em vista que diversos estudos não conseguiram comprovar que o letramento financeiro efetivamente melhora as condições de vida dos indivíduos, principalmente aqueles em situações de maior vulnerabilidade, pois as competências desenvolvidas são, por diversas razões, insuficientes para garantir escolhas acertadas. Essas razões, ainda que também possuam elementos subjetivos, na maioria das vezes estão ligadas a questões que fogem ao controle individual: desemprego, baixa renda, discriminação, deficiências educacionais.…”

“…A venda da força de trabalho em uma sociedade que valoriza, sobremaneira, os self made men, ou seja, os empreendedores, parece ser uma deficiência que a Educação Financeira teria a tarefa de, pelo menos em parte, compensar. Nesse sentido, o site corrobora as discussões de Clarke (2015), para quem a Educação Financeira reflete as desigualdades sociais. Segundo ele, aqueles em situação de desvantagem econômica receberão "conselhos sobre poupança, seguros, riscos associados a empréstimos para consumo" (CLARKE, 2015, p. 6), enquanto os que contam com mais recursos receberão informações sobre formas sofisticadas de investimentos.…”

A Feminist Moral-Political Economy of Uneven Reform in Austerity Britain: Fostering Financial and Parental Literacy

“…Financial literacy education (FLE) is a coordinated policy objective developed at the OECD and adopted in the UK, which according to Clarke (2015), creates an "irreconcilable gap" between the empowerment discourse of financial literacy for ordinary people and the actual success of ordinary people in achieving security and wellbeing through financial markets (258). Moreover, state-sponsored financial literacy programs naturalise highly gendered form of financial knowledge and expertise.…”