Using data from the 2018 National Financial Capability Study (NFCS), this study examined the relationships between poor financial behaviors, receiving government assistance, and financial satisfaction while accounting for adverse financial experiences. The logistic regression results showed that both poor financial behaviors and adverse financial experiences increased the likelihood of receiving government assistance. The OLS results indicated that receiving government assistance significantly increased levels of financial satisfaction, whereas poor financial behaviors significantly decreased levels of financial satisfaction. While the magnitude of these associations for both receiving government assistance and poor financial behaviors was small, adverse financial experiences had a stronger influence on the levels of financial satisfaction. When we combined poor financial behaviors and receiving government assistance into a categorical variable, we gained additional insights into the connections between these constructs that warrants further research.
Keywords: Adverse Financial Experiences; Financial Behaviors; Financial Satisfaction; Government Assistance.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2022, Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.