The Need to Improve Financial and Economic Education in Japanese Schools

January 2014 saw the launch in Japan of the Nippon Individual Savings Account (NISA) program. There are high hopes that this will encourage more young people to invest. However, there was unanimous agreement among the university students who took part as panelists in a series of seminars cosponsored by the Nomura Institute of Capital Markets Research in July 2013 that more needs to be done for financial and economic education in primary, junior and senior high schools in Japan if this is to be achieved. Countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia have demonstrated a national commitment to increasing financial literacy at school level. The authors propose that Japan should also raise the status of its approach to financial and economic education at school level to that of a national strategy and that the government should set up a Financial and Economic Education Center