Financial Literacy Ranking by Country
How does your country stack up on financial literacy — and does it matter? According to the S&P Global FinLit Survey, only 1 in 3 adults worldwide can correctly answer basic questions about interest rates, inflation, and risk.
The implications are enormous: from retirement planning to debt management, financial knowledge isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a prerequisite.
This article presents the full global ranking of financial literacy by country, drawn from the most comprehensive survey of its kind — over 150,000 interviews across 140+ nations.
Read on to find your country, explore the regional breakdowns, and test your own financial literacy with the quiz below.
The data may surprise you. Sweden and Norway lead the world. Yemen sits at the bottom. And Italy — one of the eurozone’s largest economies — trails Tanzania.
Why Financial Literacy Matters More Than Ever
One in three. That’s the share of adults globally who understand the four basic financial concepts that govern nearly every money decision they’ll ever make. Not a figure from a developing economy — a global average.
We live in an era of expanding financial access. Governments worldwide are pushing citizens toward bank accounts, digital payments, and formal credit. Mobile banking reaches remote villages. Pension systems are shifting the burden of retirement planning from employers to individuals.
And yet the very people being handed these tools often lack the knowledge to use them well.
The consequences are predictable. Consumers who don’t understand interest compounding pay more on their debts than necessary. Those who can’t distinguish inflation-adjusted returns from nominal ones make distorted investment decisions. Those who haven’t heard of risk diversification concentrate their savings dangerously. Financial ignorance is not benign — it compounds, just like interest.
The good news? Financial literacy is learnable. And knowing where your country stands — and where you stand — is the first step.
The 2015 S&P Global FinLit Survey: A Once-in-a-Generation Study
Before diving into the rankings, it’s worth pausing to appreciate just how extraordinary the data source is — because nothing quite like it has been done before, or since.
The Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services Global Financial Literacy Survey (S&P Global FinLit Survey) was conducted in 2014, published in 2015, and assembled through a remarkable collaboration: S&P Ratings Services, Gallup Inc., the World Bank Development Research Group, and the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center (GFLEC) at George Washington University.
The scale is staggering. Over 150,000 adults were interviewed across 148 countries — representing virtually every inhabited nation on Earth. In countries where telephone access was limited (typically where fewer than 80% of the population has a phone), interviews were conducted face-to-face. The target population was everyone aged 15 and above. This was not an online opt-in poll. This was boots-on-the-ground, rigorous, globally standardised fieldwork.
GFLEC describes it plainly as “the largest, most comprehensive global measurement of financial literacy” ever undertaken — and as a “unique, first-of-its-kind” study. That language is not marketing hyperbole.
To date, no known successor survey has replicated this methodology at a comparable scale and geographic breadth. The data is now over a decade old, which is a limitation worth acknowledging — but it remains the single best global baseline we have.
Why hasn’t it been repeated? Large-scale cross-country surveys of this kind require enormous funding, institutional coordination, and political goodwill across 140+ governments. The 2014 survey was a rare alignment of all three. Smaller follow-up studies and regional surveys exist — notably the OECD/INFE surveys — but none match the global coverage of the S&P FinLit Survey. In this sense, the data presented in this article is both invaluable and, for now, irreplaceable.
Financial literacy was assessed using four questions, each targeting a core concept in personal financial decision-making. A respondent was classified as financially literate only if they answered at least 3 of the 4 questions correctly.
The Four Concepts — Can You Answer Them?
Below are the four official survey questions. Try them before reading on.
| Q1: Interest Rates: You need to borrow $100. Which is cheaper: paying back $105, or $100 plus 3%? |
| $105 |
| ✓ $100 plus three percent |
| They are the same |
| Q2: Compound Interest: You put money in a bank for two years at 15% per year. Does the bank add more money in year two than year one, or the same amount? |
| ✓ More in year two |
| The same amount each year |
| Less in year two |
| Q3: Inflation: Over ten years, prices double and your income doubles. Can you buy less, the same, or more than today? |
| Less than today |
| ✓ The same as today |
| More than today |
| Q4: Risk Diversification: Is it safer to put money into one investment or multiple investments? |
| One investment |
| ✓ Multiple investments |
| It makes no difference |
S&P Rating Global -Financial Literacy – Interactive Map
The Four Concepts
Fig. 1 — % of adults globally who correctly answered each concept (S&P Global FinLit Survey, 2014)
The survey results show that inflation and basic numeracy (interest rate calculations) are the most widely understood concepts globally — roughly half of adults get these right. Knowledge of risk diversification is the weakest link, with only 35% of respondents answering correctly. That’s a striking gap: diversification is arguably the single most practical thing any investor can do with their money.
A World Unprepared
Worldwide, only 1 in 3 adults is financially literate. That means roughly 4 billion people — measured in 2015, before the global population grew further — lack a working understanding of even the most basic financial concepts. Not advanced investing theory or mathematical sophistication. Just four bare-minimum ideas: how interest compounds, how inflation erodes purchasing power, how risk and return trade off, and how diversification protects a portfolio. Concentrated in developing economies, yes — but present in surprisingly high numbers in wealthy ones too.
The Gender Gap
Fig. 2 — Gender gap in financial literacy across world regions (S&P Global FinLit Survey, 2014)
The gender gap is persistent and global. Thirty-five per cent of men are financially literate, compared to 30% of women. This gap appears in both advanced and emerging economies and holds even when controlling for income, education, and age. Women are also more likely to say ‘don’t know’ when answering financial questions — a pattern observed consistently across studies.
Wealthier countries tend to score higher, but only up to a point. For the richest 50% of economies, about 38% of the variation in financial literacy can be explained by GDP per capita. Below the $12,000 GDP per capita threshold, income has no meaningful relationship with literacy — suggesting that national education policy and consumer protection regimes matter far more than economic development alone.
One particularly counterintuitive finding: Italy scores 37% — lower than Tanzania (40%), Kenya (38%), and Cameroon (38%). A large, sophisticated European economy underperforms sub-Saharan Africa in basic financial knowledge. This is less a commentary on Italians than on a broader failure — not just of formal education, but of practical exposure. In parts of East Africa, financial decision-making is a daily necessity; mobile money, informal lending circles, and thin safety nets force a kind of applied fluency that classroom curricula rarely replicate.
The relationship between financial services and financial literacy appears to run in both directions: higher literacy leads to greater financial inclusion, and the use of financial products deepens financial knowledge. The implication for policymakers is that access alone is not enough — financial education must accompany expanded access to be effective.
Top 20 Countries
Fig. 2 — Top 20 countries by financial literacy rate (S&P Global FinLit Survey, 2014)
The Nordic triumvirate — Denmark, Norway, and Sweden — sit tied at the top at 71%.
What they share: strong public financial education systems, high trust in institutions, and cultures where discussing money is less taboo than in many southern European or Asian contexts.
Canada, Israel, and the UK follow closely behind.
Perhaps most notable in this list is Bhutan at 54%, outscoring Austria, Luxembourg, and France. A small Himalayan kingdom, guided by the philosophy of Gross National Happiness, appears to have done a better job educating its citizens about compound interest than much of the developed West.
Ranking by Region
Regional Patterns Worth Noting
Europe
The gap within Europe is striking. The Nordics and northern Europe cluster near 60–71%, while southern and eastern Europe lag considerably. Italy (37%), Portugal (26%), and Romania (22%) are low enough to raise serious questions about financial education policy. The Czech Republic (58%) and Estonia (54%) are standout performers in Central and Eastern Europe — both countries with relatively young but well-developed financial cultures post-communism.
North America
Canada (68%) leads the US (57%) by a meaningful margin. Both comfortably surpass the global average, but the US figure — just over half the adult population — is a sobering reminder that financial sophistication doesn’t automatically follow from having the world’s most developed capital markets.
Asia
Asia shows enormous internal variation. Singapore (59%) stands apart from its regional peers. Japan (43%) and Hong Kong (43%) are mid-range despite being global financial centres. China and India both sit around 28–24%, reflecting vast populations with historically limited access to formal financial education. Many Central Asian nations score in the 17–21% range.
Africa
The picture across Africa is more heterogeneous than stereotypes suggest. Botswana (52%), Tanzania (40%), Kenya (38%), and Senegal (40%) all perform comparably to or better than several European nations. The lowest scores globally are concentrated in conflict-affected or extremely low-income states: Yemen (13%), Afghanistan (14%), and Albania (14%).
Latin America
Chile (41%) and Uruguay (45%) are the regional leaders — both countries with relatively robust pension systems and financial inclusion programmes. Brazil (35%), Argentina (28%), and Mexico (32%) underperform given the size of their economies. Financial literacy education in the region has historically been underfunded.
Oceania
The Oceania regional chart reflects data from just two countries included in the S&P Global FinLit Survey — Australia (64%) and New Zealand (61%). No Pacific island nations (Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, etc.) were surveyed. This means the regional figure of roughly 62–64% should not be read as representative of the broader Pacific region, where financial literacy rates would likely be significantly lower. Oceania’s high ranking is essentially a reflection of two wealthy, developed economies with strong education systems — not the region as a whole.
What This Means for You
The survey data is interesting. But data only becomes useful when it changes behaviour. So what should you take from this?
First, knowing the four concepts tested is the minimum viable baseline. If you couldn’t confidently answer all four quiz questions above, that’s where to start. Interest compounding, in particular, is the mechanism that determines whether wealth accumulates for you or against you — whether your savings grow or your debts spiral.
Second, financial literacy doesn’t discriminate by income. The survey found that even wealthy individuals who don’t use formal financial services tend to score lower. The habit of engaging with financial products and thinking about money systematically is what builds financial skill — not simply earning more.
Third, if you have children, financial literacy is most effectively taught young. Countries with formal financial education in schools consistently outperform those that leave it to chance — or to parents who themselves were never taught. Teaching compound interest through a practical example (start a savings jar; track it monthly) is worth more than any single school lesson.
The global picture is sobering. But the individual picture is correctable. The four concepts in this survey can be learned in an afternoon. The habits they inform — saving consistently, borrowing carefully, diversifying investments, thinking in real rather than nominal terms — take a lifetime to compound.
Start now.
GLOBAL FINANCIAL LITERACY RANKING GRAPH
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