“PISA’s first financial literacy assessment shows the extent to which 15-year-old students have the financial knowledge and skills needed for the demands of today’s world. Finance is part of everyday life for many 15-year-olds, who are already consumers of financial services, such as bank accounts. As they near the end of compulsory education, students will face complex and challenging financial choices, including whether to join the labour market or continue with formal education and, if so, how to finance such study. The United States performs around the average of the 13 OECD countries and economies that participated in the financial literacy assessment. Among the 18 countries and economies that participated in the assessment, the United States ranks somewhere between 8 and 12.  More than one in six students in the United States – 17.8% compared with 15.3% across OECD countries – does not reach the baseline level of proficiency in financial literacy. At best, these students can recognise the difference between needs and wants, can make simple decisions on everyday spending, and can recognise the purpose of everyday financial documents such as an invoice.  About one in ten students in the United States is a top performer (9.4%, similar to the average of 9.7% across OECD countries). Top performers can look ahead to solve financial problems or make the kinds of financial decisions that will be only relevant to them in the future. They can take into account features of financial documents that are significant but unstated or not immediately evident, such as transaction costs, and can describe the potential outcomes of financial decisions. About 50% of 15-year-old students in the United States report that they hold a bank account, and they perform better than those who do not; but this performance gap disappears after accounting for socio-economic status. While 32% of socio-economically disadvantaged students (i.e. those in the lowest quartile of socio-economic status) hold a bank account, 70% of advantaged students (those in the highest quartile) do, the largest such difference observed across participating countries and economies.”