PhD Defence Adriana Maeve (Jenna) Barrett

Keywords: Financial well-being, retirement savings, financial decision making

"Money Matters: Understanding and Improving Financial Well-Being"
 

Improving and understanding financial well-being is important, as financial well-being contributes to health, happiness, and economic development. Currently, there is a global lack of financial well-being, which manifests as a variety of financial problems, such as a lack of engagement with financial services, poor financial decision-making, indebtedness, insufficient savings, and financial worries. This dissertation expands our understanding of financial well-being by bridging two main approaches to studying financial well-being - objective indicators and subjective perceptions. By combining questionnaires with microdata, the dissertation shows which objective indicators matter for subjective financial well-being. Furthermore, the dissertation focuses on improving financial well-being. First, the dissertation studies how a lack of customer engagement with financial services can be understood and improved. Next, it examines how individual differences in cognitive ability are related to financial well-being. Finally, the dissertation focuses on savings decisions and tests an intervention that facilitates forward-looking financial choices.

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