Teach your children well: Values of thrift and saving

A variety of factors have been posited to account for rising levels of debt and dissaving. Using data spanning two decades, we explore whether attitudes towards thrift have shifted in Canada, demographic differences, and the relationship between peoples’ priority for teaching thrift to their children and their own savings behavior. Among other findings, education is a strong predictor of the value of teaching thrift, whereas income is a strong predictor of one’s ability to save. The data do not support conventional gender differences. French and English speaking Canadians differ more significantly than those born in Canada and immigrants born elsewhere.