Cognitive abilities and household financial portfolios in association with economic development and national health system: A cross-country analysis based on SHARE data.

Cognitive ability is increasingly recognized as a significant factor influencing household portfolio decisions. However, different cognitive abilities, such as numeracy, fluency and recall, may yield different investment results. The aim of this paper is to empirically examine the associations of three cognitive abilities (numeracy, fluency and recall) with household portfolio composition using Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement (SHARE) data across 16 European countries and the multinomial logit model. Our empirical analyses focus on the impacts of differences in country characteristics, specifically the level of economic development and the existence of a national health system (NHS). The results indicate that numeracy and fluency have positive impacts on the decision to hold safe and relatively risky assets, as well as fully diversified portfolios in developed countries, but have no significant effects in emerging countries. Additionally, all three cognitive abilities positively influence the decision to hold fully diversified portfolios in the countries with NHS, while no significant effects are observed in the countries without NHS. Our findings reveal a decreased impact of cognitive abilities on portfolio types in the emerging countries and the non-NHS countries. Notably, a significant and positive correlation is found between the holding of no financial assets in both non-NHS countries and advanced countries. One important implication of this study is that marketing strategies of financial advisors should take into account household cognitive abilities, as well as differences in economic development among countries and the presence or absence of NHS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]