If, on the other hand, productivity growth were to revert to an average annual pace of 1-1/2 percent, a doubling in the standard of living would occur only every forty-seven years. Many observers-including some economists-argue that the present era of robust trend productivity growth will soon come to an end.
A recent study by Wendy Way and Karen Holden of the University of Wisconsin documents a gap in readiness to teach personal finance among K-12 educators from across the country.3 Almost 90 percent of the K-12 teachers who responded to Way and Holden’s survey expressed moderate to strong agreement with the idea that “students should be required to take a financial literacy course or pass a literacy test for high school graduation,” and about 30 percent had actually taught financial literacy concepts (usually integrated into a course on another or broader topic).