Original Research
Financial products used by South African households at different life stages
Journal of Economic and Financial Sciences | Vol 9, No 1 | a44 |
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/jef.v9i1.44
| © 2017 Cinzia Stedall, Jan M.P. Venter
| This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 18 December 2017 | Published: 10 March 2016
Submitted: 18 December 2017 | Published: 10 March 2016
About the author(s)
Cinzia Stedall, Department of Taxation, University of South Africa, South AfricaJan M.P. Venter, Department of Financial Intelligence, University of South Africa, South Africa
Full Text:
PDF (179KB)Abstract
South African households don’t save enough to ensure financial freedom after retirement. This article poses the following question: do life stages have a significant impact on the financial products used by households? The question is asked in order to identify possible interventions that could increase financial freedom. This study found that life stages have a significant impact on South African households’ selection of financial products. The use of financial products for each of the levels of the financial product usage hierarchy increases as the age of the household head increases and when the size of the family increases, the only exception being single-parent families. The study indicated that financial literacy programmes should focus on young couples and young families, as there is a notable increase in their financial product usage. The study also found a very low usage of wealth management products by South African households and suggests that policymakers consider the introduction of an incentive to increase household’s usage of these products.
Keywords
Life stages; financial product usage hierarchy; financial products; saving motives; savings
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