The Origins of Consumer Financial Literacy Education

Abstract

Like the financially literate individual, consumer financial literacy education did not appear ex nihilo but instead builds upon its neoclassical economic and consumer education foundations. This chapter continues the goal of denaturalizing and critiquing consumer financial literacy education’s historical foundations so as to support the argument for an expanded, critical financial literacy education in chapter seven. The driving assumption behind this chapter’s de-naturalization and critique is the belief that if economics and consumer education were more hospitable to moral, political and sociological concerns, financial literacy education would not have been so readily accepted in the individualist and consumerist form it currently takes.