Economic-financial skills in Mexico: regional analysis of the ENIF 2021

Abstract

Financial education enables individuals to make better decisions regarding the management of their money. In Mexico there is a low level of financial education since it occupies the 12th position among the G20 countries in this area. In addition, it is a country that has important regional differences. This paper explores these differences in relation to the Economic-Financial Competences Index built from the data of the 2021 National Survey of Financial Inclusion using descriptive statistics. The results obtained indicate that there are important differences in financial education at the regional level. The South region is the one with the lowest scores in all the sub-indices of this index. More than 50% of the population did not correctly answer the question on simple interest calculation and more than 80% did not answer the compound interest correctly, even by region, although they do understand the concept of interest. Less than 20% of the population makes use of the services offered by specialists or government institutions to compare the financial instruments they acquire. It is necessary to guide public policies to impact the aspects that have low scores, considering regional differences.