UNDERSTANDING OF THE BANKING BUSINESS IN JAPAN - IS ECONOMIC PROSPERITY ACCOMPANIED BY ECONOMIC LITERACY

Understanding of the banking business among Japanese subjects in Tokyo was compared with previous data. Twenty 8- to 10-year-olds, 36 11- to 16-year-olds, and 24 college studnets were individually interviewed for 30-40 minutes each. It was found that (1) compared with Euopean 11- to 16-year-olds, significantly fewer in this age range in Tokyo were classified as possessing either 'full understanding' or 'no understanding'; rather, a higher proportion fell into the 'transitional' stage in terms of grasping the bank's profit-making mechanism; (2) these Tokyo youngsters showed a 'lag' behind 12- to 13-year-olds in Hong Kong; (3) even among the college students only about a half had reached the stage of 'full understanding'; (4) 45 per cent of the 8- to 16-year-olds and a quarter of the college students revealed three kinds of 'alternative conceptions' about banking: 'deposited money is safely stored in the bank', 'the bank is a non-profit organization', and 'the bank does business itself'.