News 2 September 2009
New research into financial capability and wellbeing
Today we are launching a follow-up piece of research to Occasional Paper 34 on financial capability and wellbeing. This second piece looks at the impact of life events on financial capability. It also examines the way in which the characteristics of individuals and their households relate to their financial capability.
The findings confirm that financial capability is complex and variable and that financial capability fluctuates over a lifetime. The significant fluctuations that occur as a result of a change in circumstance demonstrate that there are life points when people will be in need of preventative intervention.
This research supports the Baseline Survey but unlike the Baseline it has the benefit of being able to look at financial capability and life events over time. The British Household Panel Survey, which is the dataset employed in the research, is a longitudinal study which has been tracking and surveying cohorts of the population since 1991.