How Parental Love Received in Childhood Affects Consumers’ Future Financial Discipline

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Zhiyong Yang, Professor and Department Head (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/

Abstract: The quantity and quality of nurturance that a child receives from her parents has a significant effect on the child’s future psychological health. However, it is unclear whether early nurturance similarly impacts future financial well-being—an issue of growing global importance. This article examines the effects of “parental love” on the future financial well-being of children, using measures of financial discipline and income. We analyze longitudinal data involving 1,428 children through the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth and document that the children in our sample who received higher levels of parental love during childhood are subsequently financially more disciplined and report earning higher incomes. Furthermore, we find that this association between early parental love and future financial well-being is mediated by the child’s emotional quotient. These findings are robust to the use of retrospective data from 398 consumers in the United States.

Additional Information

Publication
Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 5(3), 248–258
Language: English
Date: 2020
Keywords
financial discipline, parental love, financial health

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