The Investment Literacy Index has decreased in Slovakia year on year. (source: Sme)
The knowledge of Slovaks on investing is deteriorating. Although the fall is moderate, their investment literacy has declined year-on-year and has fallen below the baseline level of 2021.
The index reached its lowest level to date at 99.1 points after a decline of 1.5 points in Slovakia, shows the latest Investment Literacy Index produced by the Portu online investment platform, based on data from an Ipsos survey at the end of last year.
“The decline can be primarily attributed to the weaker knowledge of the younger generation, as the 18 to 26-year-old category recorded the highest decline in the index compared to 2021,” said Michal Mešťan, Dean of the Faculty of Economics, Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica. “The weaker knowledge may have been mainly due to the deterioration in the quality of teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Mešťan recalled that this was also reflected in the international PISA measurement, the results of which, for example, were described by Education Minister Tomáš Drucker as a national tragedy.
The level of knowledge of people aged 18 to 26, as expressed by the index, fell from 101.6 points in 2021 to the current 90.1 points. While in the initial measurement the knowledge of young people was among the above-average, now it's the worst.
Older fared better
Clearly, the best performers were older people aged between 54 and 65, who were the only ones to improve year-on-year.
“This also shows the problematic level of Slovak primary and secondary education in particular,” added Marek Malina, an analyst at Portu. “It fails to compensate sufficiently for the impact of children’s poor social status on their knowledge. PISA testing has also shown that students from poor families in Slovakia perform the worst among all OECD countries.”
In terms of genres, while women’s knowledge is gradually improving, up 4.9 to 87.6, the trend is opposite in the case of men, down 2.4 percent to 110.7.
After Czechia, before Poland
While in Slovakia the index level reached its lowest level to date, in the Czech Republic the trend was the opposite. The Investment Literacy Index in Slovakia’s western neighbours rose to 115.9 points.
In Poland, the survey was carried out for the first time, with the level of knowledge of Poles reaching 92.3 points converted to the Slovak basis.
