SHIFTING PREDICTORS OF FINANCIAL WELL-BEING: A MULTI-WAVE TRI-COMPONENT ANALYSIS OF U.S. FINANCIAL CAPABILITY DATA / PREDITTORI MUTEVOLI DEL BENESSERE FINANZIARIO: UN'ANALISI A TRE COMPONENTI SU PIÙ ONDATE DEI DATI STATUNITENSI SULLA CAPACITÀ FINANZIARIA
Abstract
This study examines how the predictive power of three financial literacy components, financial knowledge (FK), financial behavior (FB), and financial attitude (FA), on financial well-being (FWB) shifts across four waves of the FINRA National Financial Capability Study (2015, 2018, 2021, and 2024). Four independent ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions are estimated on 107,312 respondents spanning three macroeconomic phases: pre-pandemic stability, the COVID-19 shock, and post-pandemic disinflation. For each wave, additive composites are built for the outcome and the three predictors; the coefficients are standardized to a common scale, and multicollinearity is checked with variance inflation factors (VIF). The findings show that FA is the strongest predictor of FWB in every wave, with its standardized coefficient rising from 0.458 in 2015 to 0.548 in 2024. FB is a steady second predictor (Std. B around 0.29 to 0.36), while FK stays the weakest throughout (Std. B = 0.075 to 0.089), and the gap between FA and FK widens from 0.369 to 0.470 standardized units. R-squared rises from 0.526 to 0.601 over the period. After analyzing the scholarly conversation, to the author's knowledge, this is among the first multi-wave OLS analyses to examine the predictive structure of financial literacy across economic cycles while separating its three components. The hierarchy (FA>FB>FK) holds across all three economic environments, which suggests FA's lead is a structural feature of how financial literacy relates to well-being. That pattern supports extending the established knowledge-action gap into a knowledge-attitude-action gap, in which FA serves as the primary psychological bridge connecting knowledge to well-being. The findings are aimed at directing financial education, workplace programs, and public policy toward attitudinal and behavioral factors rather than purely factual financial knowledge alone.
JEL: G53, G50, D14, D91, C21
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejefr.v10i6.2307
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