The paper analyses the relationship between the children’s economic knowledge of the European Union (financial literacy based on understanding of EU financial concepts) and the gender and socio-economic status of the child. It uses the results of six questions from the ICCS (International Civic and Citizenship Survey) European module and ICCS Student Questionnaire.

There are several definitions of financial literacy; however the most basic one states that financial literacy relates to a person’s competence for managing money (Remund, 2010). Remund (2010) claims that several definitions of financial literacy fall into five categories, namely: knowledge of financial concepts, ability to communicate about financial concepts, aptitude in managing personal finances, skill in making appropriate financial decisions and confidence in planning effectively for future financial needs. As we can see, the knowledge of the financial concepts is the basis of the effective management of money and financial well-being. A research in USA showed that young adults possess low financial knowledge; moreover boys outperformed girls and children from wealthier families outperformed children from poorer families (Lusardi, Mitchell, Curto, 2010). In addition, the research also showed that financial literacy was strongly related to socio-demographic characteristics.

As already stated above, this paper exploits ICCS results from European countries included in the survey. The main goal of the ICCS survey is to determine how countries prepare their students for the role of the responsible citizens, which includes the development of relevant civic, political and economic knowledge and understanding, the formation of positive attitudes towards citizenship and participation in activities related to the civic education. Therefore, all students from European countries sampled in the survey had to answer a civic education knowledge test, European module and a student questionnaire on students’ living and schooling environment and their perceptions of different civic notions. There were 24 European countries included in the European module of the ICCS 2009. In Slovenia students from 8th and 9th grade in 163 schools were sampled in the survey. Moreover, 2755 teachers and 158 principals from the same 163 schools were included in the survey as well.

European module focuses on students’ European-based civic knowledge and their attitudes, perceptions and behaviours towards European civic issues (Kerr, Sturman, Schulz & Burge, 2010). Moreover, it concentrates on European citizenship and identity, intercultural relations, free movement of citizens, European policies, institutions and participations, euro and economic policies and European language learning.

To summarise, the paper focuses on question whether there exists a connection between the gender and socio-economic background of the student and student’s economic knowledge in the field of European Union and what are the differences across the European countries included in the ICCS. Main research questions were, which students show higher economic knowledge, boys or girls, students from rural or students from urban environment, students with parents that have higher or lower occupational status and students from which European country show higher level of knowledge.

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