Now is a good time to talk about money. Inflation and interest rates are squeezing wallets around the world, and global economic growth is expected to slow down to 2.9% in 2024, well below its historical average of 3.8%, according to the International Monetary Fund’s October 2023 World Economic Outlook.
Against this backdrop, it makes sense that parents are keen to teach financial literacy to their children. In a recent poll, Kansas-based research company KidSay found that only 16% of parents with two- to four-year-olds felt the topic was irrelevant to their kids— and this figure dropped to just 6% among parents of five- to seven-year-olds.
Furthermore, parents want their kids to understand money better than they do. In the US, the average adult can only correctly answer around 50% of basic questions about investing, earning and saving money, according to last year’s TIAA Institute- GFLEC Personal Finance Index report.
Despite all this, financial literacy still isn’t taught in most elementary and high schools around the world, and most content on the subject skews teen or older. Seeing this gap as a niche infotainment opportunity on the rise, several producers and broadcasters/ streamers are experimenting with the subject—and getting results.
A modern take on making cents
When it comes to making financial literacy content for children, Canadian pubcaster CBC Kids has one of the industry’s longest legacies. Its original Street Cents series, which featured a group of teen hosts sharing fun facts and journalistic reports about money, launched in 1989 and ran for almost two decades. In that time, it won several Gemini Awards, a Japan Prize and an International Emmy.
Modern kid life has changed a lot since the first show ended in 2006. Besides the advent of smartphones, social media and financial revelations such as Bitcoin, many kids and teens started to experience financial struggles firsthand in their family lives as the…
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