When politics trump evidence: financial literacy education narratives following the global financial crisis

Abstract

Financial literacy education as policy has gained international political momentum in the years following the 2008 financial crisis. This paper analyses how two policy narratives operated in Canada to promote and ultimately enact financial literacy education policy: the ‘crusade’ and the ‘chicken coop’. While the dominant and counter-narratives offer different perspectives, they both maintain financial literacy’s ‘sacred cow’ status. The application of narrative policy analysis (NPA) underscores how the politics of education policy are complex and cannot be explained by rational, positivist models that would privilege evidence over metaphor. This paper contributes to a growing body of literature on NPA, and sheds light on how financial literacy education is likely to be shaped and legitimized more by the values and mobilization power of special-interest coalitions in favour of it through politics, than by evidence-based research.