Financial Literacy and Personal Retirement Planning Among Public Sector Employees in Bukavu City, the Democratic Republic of Congo

Abstract

Many retirees are confronted with the problem of having an insufficient income to sustain their living costs. Pension plans are designed to help retirees to save a part of their income during the working years for future use during their retirement. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, pension schemes are inexistent and many employees have been shifting to personal retirement plans. More than 50% of employees do not have personal retirement plans. The general objective of this research was to investigate the effect of financial literacy on personal retirement preparedness among public sector workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The study was carried out in the city of Bukavu, one of the populated cities in the country. The specific objectives were to measure the effect of financial knowledge, computation capability, financial education, and risk attitudes toward financial products on retirement planning among public sector workers in Bukavu city. The population targeted in this study was constituted by public sector employees working for institutions under provincial government control as well as those under national government control. This study used purposive sampling and stratified sampling. The sample size for this study was 396 public sector employees. This study was supported by the life cycle theory, expected utility theory, and the theory of planned behavior. Descriptive and causal research designs were used in the present research. Logistic regression was used to verify the research hypothesis. A survey questionnaire was used to gather the primary data. The data gathered were processed using SPSS 21. The results in the estimated model showed that Financial knowledge is statistically significant with a p-value below 0.05, Computation capability is statistically significant with a p-value of below 0.05, Financial education is not statistically significant with a p-value over 0.05, and Risk attitudes toward the financial product is not statistically significant with a p-value over 0.05. Thus, Financial knowledge and Computation capability influence significantly personal retirement planning. The findings from the study support therefore that retirement planning has been influenced by the level of financial literacy of public sector employees in the city of Bukavu. The study recommends to public sector employees to improve their level of financial literacy for better living conditions during their retirement period and to policymakers to organize financial literacy training for public sector employees in the Democratic Republic of Congo.