The following is adapted from the “Women and Finance: The 2022 Rich Thinking Quantitative Survey Findings” report by Barbara Stewart, CFA, and Duncan Stewart CFA.
64% of 18-to-29-year-old US women already invest or plan to within the year.
90% of US women investors aged 18 to 59 use online platforms compared to only 40% of US women investors over 60.
Globally, 24% of women started talking with friends, family, or colleagues about investing since the start of the pandemic.
About 90% of Swedish and Danish women investors interact with other women about investing in online social communities. That is double the rate of US women.
9% of US women over 60 already invest in blockchain-enabled assets, such as bitcoin, and another 5% plan to start in the next year.
Young US women aged 18 to 29 are almost three times more likely to invest or plan to invest in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) assets than US women over 60.
Given all the changes in investing behavior I was seeing as I conducted my interviews over the past couple of years, I wanted to ask six questions and measure how women’s behavior was changing since the COVID-19 pandemic went global in March 2020.
- How many women were investing in assets aside from their own homes?
- How many were investing using online platforms?
- How many were talking to their friends, family, or colleagues about investing?
- How many were interacting with other women investors online through social communities?
- How many were investing in blockchain-enabled assets, such as bitcoin or non-fungible tokens (NFTs)?
- How many were investing in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) or sustainable and diverse assets?
I happen to be married to a global expert on the design, analysis, and interpretation of consumer surveys. Duncan Stewart, CFA, usually does this kind of work on tech-, media-, and telecom-related topics for his employer, but he’s also deeply interested in the topic of women and investing, and I am thrilled to have him as coauthor.
We surveyed more than 2,000 women aged 18 to 75 online between 10 and 12 November 2021 in five countries: 1,057 in the United States — a large enough sample to do statistically significant analysis by age cohorts and income brackets — and 250 each in the United Kingdom, Singapore, Sweden, and Denmark.
1. Do you invest in any asset classes other than your own home: stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, alternative assets such as cryptocurrencies, and so on?
An amazing 64% of US women aged 18 to 29 either invest already or plan to invest within the year. That’s a higher percentage than any other age group, and even when we look at only those actually investing, more than four in 10 US women aged 18 to 44 are investing for their futures. This is a recent development for the youngest cohort: More than half of current investors started only after March 2020, just 20 months prior to this survey. Of course, more than a third of those over age 60 were investing prior to the pandemic.
2. Do you invest using an online platform, such as Robinhood, E*TRADE, or others?
There is a demographic cliff on this topic: US women investors over 60 are less than half as likely to use an online platform as their younger peers. Among 18-to-29-year-old US women investors, meanwhile, these platforms are ubiquitous. Although women investors aged 30–60 are a little less likely to invest using online platforms than the youngest cohort, they are still highly likely, at 90% or more. Remarkably, though almost one in three 18-to-29-year-old US women don’t invest, 60% intend to make the leap on an online platform. The age gap in online platforms is wide for senior women, with only 11% of those over 60 expressing any interest. Given the trends, that gap looks like it will widen even further. Still, the over-60 crowd may have larger or more complex portfolios and may therefore prefer traditional wealth management advisers over digital alternatives.
3. Do you talk about investing with your friends, family, or colleagues?
Roughly 30% of US women in all age groups spoke about investing with friends, family, or colleagues before March 2020. But while 7% of women over 60 began conversations after that date, three times as many women aged 30 to 60 and almost five times as many aged 18 to 29 did as well.
Why was COVID-19 such an inflection point for all but the oldest age group? We think the pandemic was more disruptive for those under 60. Lockdowns and work- and study-from-home arrangements all pushed younger women to change their habits more than their older peers. Being at home, being online, and perhaps feeling a novel sense of isolation and lack of physical community may have encouraged these women to reach out more about investing and probably other topics as well.
4. Do you interact with other female investors via an online social community such as Facebook, eToro, or others?
Since younger women are much more likely to use social media and online networks, it makes sense that they’d discuss investing on these platforms to a greater extent than their older peers. But the gap between younger US women and those over 60 is striking. Nearly half of 60-plus US women are on social media, they just don’t talk about investing on them. Nor does it look like they are about to start: Only 7% of non-investors over 60 say they plan to use these platforms to communicate about investing in the next year.
5. Do you invest in any blockchain-enabled assets, such as bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies, or NFTs?
Nearly half of US women aged 19 to 29 either invest in blockchain-enabled assets or plan to within the year. The pandemic was a big accelerant: Investing in this category among all age groups has picked up since March 2020.
There are two ways of looking at the over-60 cohort and crypto: As an age group, over 60s are much less likely to invest in bitcoin and the like. On the other hand, they are emphatically not at zero when it comes to this asset class. Almost one in 10 US women over 60 already invest in it and another 5% are planning to. Also, since only 39% of women in this cohort say they invest in any non-real estate asset class and 9% are investing in blockchain assets, that means about a quarter of women investors over 60 hold some crypto.
6. Do you invest in sustainable or diverse assets, such as ESG, socially responsible investing (SRI), gender equality funds, or others?
More than four in 10 US women aged 18 to 29 either invest in ESG-type assets or plan to within the next year. That’s almost triple the percentage among those over 60. Once again, the pandemic changed a lot for this young age group: Of the 26% of respondents in this category who invest in ESG, well over half of them started after March 2020.
The activity and intent around sustainability and diversity in investing is clearly influenced by age: The propensity to invest or intent to invest drop for older groups. Frankly, it’s a little shocking that only 10% of US women over 60 are investing in any ESG-type assets. Perhaps younger women should be educating their mothers and grandmothers?
For more on this topic, read the full report “Women and Finance: The 2022 Rich Thinking Quantitative Survey Findings” report by Barbara Stewart, CFA, and Duncan Stewart CFA.
If you liked this post, don’t forget to subscribe to the Enterprising Investor.
All posts are the opinion of the author. As such, they should not be construed as investment advice, nor do the opinions expressed necessarily reflect the views of CFA Institute or the author’s employer.
Image credit: Getty Images / Prasit photo
Professional Learning for CFA Institute Members
CFA Institute members are empowered to self-determine and self-report professional learning (PL) credits earned, including content on Enterprising Investor. Members can record credits easily using their online PL tracker.
