Stephen J. Dubner passes along a study:
[F]ewer than one-third of young adults possess basic knowledge of interest rates, inflation, and risk diversification. Financial literacy is strongly related to sociodemographic characteristics and family financial sophistication. Specifically, a college-educated male whose parents had stocks and retirement savings is about 50 percentage points more likely to know about risk diversification than a female with less than a high school education whose parents were not wealthy.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2009/10/the-financial-literacy-gap/194999/
