From NPR:

Marketplace has developed their own Economic Anxiety Index to go beyond the traditional economic figures you hear spouted about on a regular basis (i.e., unemployment rate, new jobs created, GDP, CPI).  After providing some identifying information (see above), the quiz asks some general questions about your financial situation (including “Do you lose sleep over your financial situation?”). It then asks some questions about your employment situation, housing, other expenses, saving for retirement, paying for college, car payments, medical bills and student loan payments (anyone anxious yet?). It then provides a great interactive you to allow the survey respondent to compare their results with others across many different dimensions.

So, while many of these questions aren’t relevant for your high school students, I thought it would be instructive for students to go through this process:

• Identifies potential sources of financial stress that they will encounter as adults (and that their parents may be experiencing now).
  • One question that seems to be missing in their survey deals with relationships and how they impact financial stress. Something along the lines of “my partner and I have similar philosophies regarding money issues” with a scale like “Always True, Sometimes True…”
• Gauges the level of financial stress across several different dimensions that students might be interested in  (each of these charts on their own could lead to great discussions):
  • Education
  • Salary vs. hourly
  • Gender
• Activity Idea: Use this survey as a template to have students create their own questions to develop an Economic Anxiety Index that is relevant to them.
  • Categories might include:
    • Paying for college
    • Student debt required to pay for college
    • Standard of living comparable to my parents
    • Getting a job after college
    • Food security
  • Load the questions on Survey Monkey or Google Forms and have students analyze the results.
  • This would be an interesting survey for you to use on a regular basis (every semester) to see how it varies over time.

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.

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