Awareness and Perception of Numeracy Skills among Rural and Urban Households of Punjab

Description

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21274342

Jaspreet Kaur and Mohit Gupta (School of Business Studies, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab)

In many real-life scenarios, including cooking, home renovation tasks, travel planning, shopping, and more, numeracy abilities are required. The study provides a comparative assessment of subjective numeracy skills between rural and urban households of Punjab, through self-perceived cognitive abilities and preferences for the display of numerical information. The data was collected from the 160 respondents from each district, namely, Rupnagar, Ludhiana, and Fazilka, thereby making a total sample of 480 respondents equally divided between rural and urban samples. For data collection, a research instrument, i.e., a questionnaire, was developed. The results revealed that rural and urban households reported similar levels of confidence in numerical calculations. However, rural respondents showed a low preference for the display of complex numeric information over verbal descriptions as compared to urban respondents. The financial education and numeracy programs in Punjab should prioritise increasing comfort with numerical representations, especially in rural areas, in addition to developing fundamental numerical skills.