CEPAR and the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU hosted a public lecture by Professor Elsa Fornero, University of Turin.
Financial literacy has important implications not only for personal well-being, but also for economic reforms, and thus for collective well-being. Reforms are meant to change people’s behavior. Their effectiveness crucially depends on citizens recognizing and generally accepting their necessity, general design, “sense of direction”. Without basic understanding by citizens, reforms risk having little or no effect or even being nullified. Responsible judgment about economic reforms requires not only literacy but also information and numeracy. People’s effective participation in the reform is a prerequisite for correcting misperceptions and changing behavior (on the part of workers, employers and institutions as well) and thus for the social sustainability (resilience) of the reform. This is particularly true of pension reforms because of their profound impact on people’s life plans. The 2011 Italian pension reform is seen as a case in point.