The Next Big Thing in Gambling And Financial Stress

Wagering is a common and largely acknowledged form of recreation. Although gambling is normally not really a problem for most people, it’s indeed habit forming and troublesome for some, and has been found to get a bad impact on people ’s health, jobs, relationship issues, and social capital, among other outcomes.

Financial Anxiety

Using the section of the HILDA survey that records data on respondents’ experiences of economic hardship  and financial pressure, we merge the methods used in earlier studies to generate four binary aspects of financial stress. Respondents were asked whether they had experienced any of the following over the previous 12 months, based on a self-completion questionnaire:

“cannot pay electricity, telephone bills, or gas on time”,  “could not pay the rent or mortgage on time”, “pawned or sold something”, “ended up going without meals”, were unable to heat home”, “tried to ask for monetary assistance from friends or family”, and “asked for help from welfare/community.

We generate and label our four indicators based on these questions: ‘financial difficulty,’ ‘cashflow,’ and ‘hardship.’

Financial Stability

Financial resilience is defined as the ability to save a year’s worth of income for an emergency. Although the time frame varies, respondents in the Global Findex survey were asked if they were able rise with an equivalent amount to one-twentieth of the gross national income per person in local currency within the upcoming month.