Session: Financial Capability across the Globe: Results from Canada, China, and Ghana (Society for Social Work and Research 22nd Annual Conference - Achieving Equal Opportunity, Equity, and Justice)

Background The symposium presents findings on financial capability from across the globe, including Canada, China, and Ghana. Among the grand challenges of the Society for Social Work and research is "Building financial capability for all." However, sometimes "all" includes all apart from those at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, including survivors of trafficking from lower-income countries. Immigrant families are another group of people who might fall through the crux of financial inclusion. These socioeconomic factors might in turn prevent individuals from saving and building assets for themselves and their children, including saving for college education, as is demonstrated by the paper from Canadian findings. Methods The papers use advanced statistical methods including SEM. Some data is secondary and nationally representative while others are primary data. Findings Findings with female victims of trafficking indicate that that participants with lower education had higher levels of financial risk. Conversely, we found a significant effect of education on financial planning. Specifically, those with higher education levels had higher levels of financial planning than participants with lower education levels, indicating education significantly predicts financial planning. Finally, results indicate significant effects of age, having children, marital status and time since intervention on financial savings. Specifically, older women reported lower levels of financial savings than younger women. Having children was related to lower levels of financial savings. Women that indicated they were married on average reported higher levels of financial savings than single women. The study from families with children in China found that compared to nonmigrant ones, migrant children had lower academic performance on all three subjects, lower educational expectations from parents, and were less likely to have educational assets prepared by parents. The SEM mediation analysis including all children suggested that educational assets statistically increased the level of parental expectation, and parental expectation was positively associated with academic performance; there was no a direct association between academic achievement and educational assets. In the multiple group SEM analysis, these results still hold for migrant children, with even greater regression coefficients; however, the association between parental expectation and educational assets for nonmigrant children was positive but not statistically significant. Finally, a nationally representative data in Canada found that overall, most households with children saved for their children's education. As expected, full financial inclusion was the best fitting model. Compared to the group with no bank products nor Registered Education Saving Plan (RESP), all groups were more likely to be saving for their children's education: bank products but no RESP, RESP but no bank products, and both bank products and RESP. This particular paper presents predicted probabilities of saving for education across age and income levels. Implications As financial inclusion gains traction all over the world, social workers should be mindful of at-risk pockets of populations that may be further excluded from the growing global middle class. Financial inclusion for all must be for ALL.