Junior Achievement USA^® (JA) and The Allstate Foundation’s 2014 Teens & Personal Finance Survey reveals a gender gap among teenagers’ views and habits on budgeting, college plans and future earning power.

Junior Achievement USA has conducted the Teens & Personal Finance Survey for the last 15 years, partnering with The Allstate Foundation since 2005. The survey found that 91 percent of teen girls, ages 13-18, plan to attend college after they graduate from high school, compared with 86 percent of teen boys.

Of teens planning to attend college, girls may be giving more thought to how they financially will achieve their goals. Seventy-nine percent of teen girls (ages 13-18) plan to seek scholarships/grants to pay for college, compared to 66 percent of boys 13-18.

Nationally, 66 percent of teen girls say the rising costs of college have changed their decisions about their future college plans (versus 57 percent of teen boys), and 40 percent of teen girls say they are considering staying in-state to save money on tuition costs (versus 30 percent of teen boys).

Since 2005, Junior Achievement and The Allstate Foundation have partnered to provide students with valuable information about personal finance in the classroom and help them apply it in their lives. The JA Economics for Success^® program, created in partnership with The Allstate Foundation, has helped more than 1.2 million students set personal goals about money and make wise financial choices. The program also helps empower students to develop, plan and set goals to help protect them from unexpected financial pitfalls.

Other key findings from the survey include:

• Parents are more likely to give their sons an allowance than their daughters. Sixty-seven percent of boys compared with 59 percent of girls say they get an allowance from their parents.
• When it comes to financial literacy, 21 percent of boys and 19 percent of girls say their parents/guardians do not spend enough time talking to them about saving money. Twenty-one percent of girls and 19 percent of boys say their parents don’t spend enough time talking to them about managing money and creating a budget.
• 43 percent of teen boys think they will make more than $35,000 at their first jobs, compared with 35 percent of teen girls.

More information about this study can be found in the 2014 Teens and Personal Finance Executive Summary.   You can also read JA’s other position papers.