Children's Saving: Studies in the Development of Economic Behaviour

Sonuga-Barke, E. J. S. and Webley, P.

ISBN 10: 0863772331 / ISBN 13: 9780863772337

Published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993

About this Item

This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside.This book has hardback covers. In good all round condition. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item,450grams, ISBN:0863772331.

Seller Inventory # 9550095

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Children's Saving: Studies in the Development of Economic Behaviour
• Publisher: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
• Publication Date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0863772331
• ISBN 13: 9780863772337
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 450 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • Psychology & Psychiatry

About this title

Synopsis

This book presents an alternative approach to the study of the emergence of economic awareness during childhood: a new developmental economic psychology. In the past, attempts to study the emergence of children's economic consciousness have failed to take account of the practical nature of the "economic" in the history of western cultures. Economic socialization has been seen as the acquisition of abstract knowledge about the institutions of adult economic culture. The child has been seen as a spectator, acquiring knowledge of that culture, but never really part of it.
However, economic actions, in essence, are directed not towards the attainment of knowledge but rather towards the practical solution of problems of resource allocation imposed by constraint. Children, just like adults, are faced with practical problems of resource allocation. Their response to these problems may be different from those of adults but no less "economic" for that.
This realization forms the heart of this book. In it children are seen as both inhabitants of their own "playground" economic subculture and actors in the wider economic world of adults, solving, or attempting to solve, practical economic problems. In order to highlight this "child centered" approach the authors studied the way children tackle the particular problems posed by limitations of income. How do children learn, a) the relationship between choices available in the present and the future, b) to spread their limited financial resources over time into the future and c) about the strategies, such as banking, that allow them to protect those resources from threats and temptations. In short, how do children learn to save?
This volume goes some way to answering these and related questions and in so doing sets up an alternative framework for the study of the emergence of economic awareness.