The Clemson-Winthrop Home Economics Research Council was organized This study was designed to obtain facts about the adolescent consumer in A supplementary publication which includes a more detailed and complete The importance of adolescents as consumers needs to be recognized by families, business, home economists, and others concerned with domestic economy. Youth under 18 years of age comprise 43 percent of the total population of the State of South Carolina. Hence there is a need for the empirical evidence which this research sought to obtain on the ways in which adolescents in South Carolina obtained and used their money and the factors related to various elements in their money management. The subjects were 12,317 white boys and girls from grades 7, 9, and 12 randomly selected from schools chosen by stratified sampling. The money that adolescents received, to a great extent, was from their parents. As the grade level increased, the proportion of boys and girls who had money from jobs outside the home increased, whereas the proportion who had money from parents for work done decreased. The average weekly incomes for all South Carolina boys and girls ranged from $.95 to $3.92. Complete freedom in disposition of their money was reported by over half of the South Carolina youth studied. No freedom in use of their money was reported by less than one-fourth, in any age-sex classification. Boys tended to have more freedom than girls in the use of their money. The main items for which the respondents spent their money, in decreasing order of importance based on the proportion of students who used money for these purposes, were: (1) snacks, (2) school lunches, (3) recreation, (4) savings, (5-6) clothing and school supplies. There was a large group (from one-third to one-half of each age-sex classification) of students who had money saved; and the more informal methods of saving were preferred over the use of banks or savings and loan associations or buying savings stamps or bonds. The use of charge accounts by the students in the sample was not the usual thing, but it was by no means uncommon. The girls were more apt to buy on lay-away than were the boys. There was, in general, an improvement in the shopping practices and money management programs of both the boys and the girls (1) as they progressed in school; (2) when they had studied the handling of money; (3) when they had been on a strict allowance; and (4) when their parents had a careful plan for the use of money. |