Financial Literacy Among Americans At 10-Year-Low, Gen Z Worst Generation: Survey

Financial literacy among Americans has fallen to a 10-year-low, a new study has revealed.

The share of Americans with very low financial literacy has increased from 20% to 25% since 2017, a report by investment giant TIAA and Stanford University's Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center has revealed.

In 2025, American adults correctly answered only 47% of the 28 questions used to assess financial literacy. This is down from a high of 52% in 2020 as well as the lowest score since the survey began a decade ago.

Younger adults and women scored lower than other groups. Gen Z adults, ages 18 to 29 scored 38%, the lowest of any generation. Baby boomers had the highest score at 54%. Women managed to answer 44% of the questions correctly, compared to 50% for men.

 What The Survey Reveals

Adults with very low financial literacy are four times more likely to lack a month of emergency savings and struggle making ends meet, as per the researchers.

The survey also revealed that workers with very low financial literacy spent almost 11 hours every week dealing with money issues at work, the equivalent of over one lost workday.

“Financial literacy has declined significantly in five of the eight functional knowledge areas covered by the index: consuming, borrowing, earning, insuring, and comprehending risk indicating that the decline is broad-based, not concentrated in a single topic,” a release by the institute stated.

Questions related to retirement were a section many people failed to answer. The individuals surveyed averaged about two correct answers out of six problem statements.

A meagre 7% were able to ace five or six of the retirement-related questions. More than a third replied to just one or none of the problems correctly.

The questions signalled the preparedness of the individuals for retirement. Those who answered four or more of the questions correctly were twice as likely to save for retirement.

They were also twice as likely to have calculated how much savings they need, compared to people who answered one or none correctly.

Surya Kolluri, head of the TIAA Institute, told Yahoo Finance that there were multiple reasons for the gaps in financial literacy.

“When a third of American adults struggle to make ends meet in a typical month, survival mode takes over,” he said.

To get a grip on money matters, many adults often turn to social media, where the content “is engaging but rarely educational,” he added.  

For Kolluri, the survey reveals a widening gap across all sections of everyday financial decision-making.