Financial Literacy Statistics (2026)

By the most rigorous measure, not very, and now getting worse. US adults answered just 47% of the 28 questions on the TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance Index correctly in 2026, a statistically significant decline from 49% in 2025 and the lowest result in the index's 10-year history; the score has never exceeded 52%.

The decline is driven by the bottom of the distribution: the share answering 7 or fewer questions correctly rose from 20% in 2017 to 25% in 2026, while the share answering 22 or more stayed essentially flat (15% versus 16%). No generation, on average, even cleared 55%.

The most famous financial-literacy test is the "Big Three" from economists Lusardi and Mitchell, covering compound interest, inflation, and risk diversification. Only about a third of Americans answer all three correctly.

Put the other way: by this standard, two-thirds of Americans are not financially literate. The questions are genuinely basic (does a diversified fund carry less risk than a single stock?), which makes the low pass rate all the more striking.

Literacy rises with age through the boomers. In 2026 Gen Z scored just 38% on the P-Fin Index, versus 46% for millennials, 49% for Gen X, and 54% for boomers; the small Silent Generation sample scored 47% (see the chart and table below).

The gap at the bottom is stark: 37% of Gen Z fall into the "very low" literacy band (7 or fewer of 28 questions right), the largest segment of that generation, versus 15% of boomers. Insuring is Gen Z's weakest area at 25% correct, against 53% for boomers.

Literacy also splits along gender and racial lines. In 2026 men answered 50% of questions correctly versus 44% for women, a 6-point gap, and 19% of men reached the very-high band against 11% of women (see the table below).

By race, Asian (53%) and White (51%) adults scored well above Hispanic (39%) and Black (36%) adults, a 12-17 point gap. Education and income matter even more: 61% for bachelor's degree holders versus 30% without a high-school diploma, and 55% in households earning $100,000 or more versus 28% under $25,000. These gaps mirror, and help perpetuate, the wealth gaps documented on our wealth inequality page.

A second major measure, the FINRA Foundation's quiz, tells the same story and adds a worrying trend. Only 27% of adults answered 5 or more of 7 questions correctly in 2024, and just 4% got all seven right (see the table below).

The share answering the "core 5" questions correctly fell from 42% in 2009 to 32% today. On this measure, financial knowledge has actually declined over 15 years, even as the financial products people must navigate have grown more complex.

Not all topics are equal. On the 2026 P-Fin Index, the lowest-scoring area is comprehending risk, just 36% correct, down from 39% in 2017. The highest-scoring remains borrowing and managing debt (60% for men, 56% for women). Knowledge fell significantly in five of eight areas since 2017: consuming (down 5 points), plus borrowing, earning, insuring, and risk (each down 3).

That pattern is telling: Americans know the most about debt, which they deal with constantly, and the least about risk, which is exactly the concept that matters most for investing well. Investing and insuring also trail, with women scoring 39% and 38% on them versus 50% and 44% for men.

There is one encouraging trend: inflation knowledge improved, likely because everyone lived through it. The share answering the inflation question correctly rose from 53% in 2021 to 58% in 2024, with the biggest gain among young adults, 18-34-year-olds jumped from 34% to 44% (see the table below).

It's a reminder that financial literacy can rise, real-world experience taught a generation about inflation faster than any classroom. The challenge is teaching the other concepts before people learn them the hard way.

A specific weak spot is retirement knowledge. In 2026 US adults answered just 37% of six retirement-fluency questions correctly (2.2 on average), covering Social Security, Medicare, long-term care, and life expectancy. Only 7% got five or six right, while 36% got one or none; just 27% knew Medicare's average coverage of retiree health costs and 28% the odds of needing long-term care.

Even boomers, closest to retirement and highest-scoring, answered 44%, fewer than half. Among workers who got four or more right, over 80% save for retirement regularly and 70% feel confident about retirement income, versus 49% and 44% among those with one or none. This knowledge gap is a big reason so many households reach retirement underprepared, as our retirement savings statistics show.

Globally, the US is middling. On the S&P Global financial-literacy survey, 57% of US adults were financially literate, ranking the country 14th in the world, behind the Nordic leaders (Norway, Denmark, Sweden) at 71% (see the chart above).

The world average is just 33%, meaning about 3.5 billion adults lack basic financial understanding. (This cross-country benchmark is from 2014, the most recent comprehensive global comparison, so treat the exact ranking as dated even though the pattern holds.)

Within the US, financial knowledge varies by state, though the range is narrow. Minnesota, Wisconsin, and DC top the FINRA rankings, with about 34-35% answering 5+ of 7 questions correctly (see the table below).

Even the best states hover around a third passing, which shows that low literacy is a nationwide problem, not a regional one. Geography matters far less here than age, education, and income.

The most hopeful development is in schools. As of late 2025, 30 states guarantee all high schoolers a standalone personal-finance course before graduation, double the 15 states in 2022 (see the chart above).

The push, led by advocacy groups aiming for all students by 2030, is a bet that teaching the basics early can finally move a literacy rate that has never topped 52% and fell to 47% in 2026. Whether it works will show up in the P-Fin scores of the next decade.

Low financial literacy isn't an abstract problem, it maps directly onto financial hardship. In 2026, adults with very low literacy were four times as likely to have trouble making ends meet, over twice as likely to be debt-constrained, three times as likely to be financially fragile, and four times as likely to lack one month of nonretirement savings (see the table below).

The fragility is widespread: across all adults, 33% find it hard to make ends meet, 32% could not raise $2,000 within a month, and 48% of nonretirees lack (or are unsure they have) one month of savings; for Gen Z those last two figures are 42% and 61%. FINRA's survey finds only 46% of adults have three months of savings, down from 53% in 2021. Knowledge gaps and money problems reinforce each other.

The encouraging truth buried in this data is that financial literacy is learnable, and the highest-value concepts are few. The Big Three, compound interest, inflation, and diversification, plus a grasp of fees and index investing, cover most of what actually drives good outcomes.

You don't need to ace a 28-question index to build wealth; you need to internalize a handful of durable ideas: start early (compounding), spread risk (diversify), keep costs low (index funds), and hold an emergency fund. Those basics, applied consistently, matter far more than financial sophistication, which is exactly why closing the literacy gap is one of the highest-return investments a person, or a country, can make.