England has one of the lowest levels of financial literacy

One-in-three adults in England and Northern Ireland (NI) cannot work out the correct change from a shopping trip, according to new research from UCL and University of Cambridge. The findings show that adults in England and NI perform worse on everyday financial numeracy tasks than adults in many other developed countries - even when using a calculator. The study also finds that that four-in-ten adults in England and NI could not correctly apply a simple discount to an everyday household product they might buy when shopping. In addition, when it came to interpreting a graph containing basic financial information, more than half of adults in England and NI fail. Professor John Jerrim (UCL Institute of Education), co-author of the working paper, said: "This new research highlights how England is facing a crisis in terms of adults' financial literacy skills. We all need to be able to conduct basic financial calculations in order to make rational well-informed decisions. This includes how much we should save into our pensions, understanding the financial implications of borrowing money from payday loan sites, through to whether we can really afford to buy a particular house.