Social Class, Family Money Practice, and College Costs: Formulating a Typology of Class-Based Financial Literacies

• In Event: Roundtable Session 20
  In Roundtable Session: Social Class, Community, and Family

Abstract

According to Perna (2010), higher education research has yet to fully tackle the relationship between information and decision-making. This study bridges this gap by examining how financial literacy shapes high and low-income families’ college financing practices and how these practices, in turn, result in advantages or disadvantages within the college financing arena. Identifying specific class-based financial literacy competencies contributes to the literature in two important ways. First, it offers tangible evidence as to how high income and low-income parents transmit class-based cultural assets (i.e. financial literacies/competencies) to their children. Second, in documenting these differing forms of literacy, we can work towards developing new, more effective interventions and learning opportunities to equalize the college finance playing field for low-income families.

Author

• Shannon M. Calderone, Washington State University - Pullman