Honors Program
University Honors
Date of Award
5-2017
Thesis Professor(s)
Colin Glennon
Thesis Professor Department
Political Science, International Affairs, and Public Administration
Thesis Reader(s)
John David Briley, William Burton
Abstract
Unfortunately, rural Appalachia is perennially one of the poorest areas of the United States. Many scholars have offered opinions as to why this trend of poverty continues in this region, but one potential cause has not been the subject of much research: do residents in Appalachia have a functional knowledge of the financial system, or even a simple understanding of basic savings, which is necessary for achieving certain levels of financial security?
We conduct a survey modeled after a national study which measures basic financial literacy in local Appalachia, expecting to find that at-risk Appalachians would have less financial literacy than the national average. While our initial response rate was too low to justify a concrete claim, our preliminary findings suggest that local at-risk Appalachians were more likely to incorrectly answer basic financial literacy questions, and we believe that a larger study into this issue is warranted. Should a concrete outcome arise in the affirmative, we offer suggestions for policy responses, including implementation of free personal finance classes to combat the issue.
Publisher
East Tennessee State University
Document Type
Honors Thesis - Open Access
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Osborne, Elijah R., "Financial Literacy in Local At-Risk Appalachia" (2017). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 375. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/375
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.