Analysing Literature on Financial Well-being: A Bibliometric Approach

Abstract

This study performs a bibliometric analysis to assimilate the most influential research on financial well-being and identify research gaps. A total of 313 research articles between 1 January 1989 and 4 July 2022 were identified using financial well-being synonyms linked by OR Boolean operator: ‘financial well-being’ OR ‘economic well-being’ OR ‘financial satisfaction’ OR ‘financial wellness in the title and abstract using the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection database. VOSviewer software was used to analyse bibliometric data. To identify the contributions of important authors, organizations and nations, the study examined bibliographic coupling, citation and co-authorship networks. Based on network analysis, five major themes were identified: individual skills and financial capability, socio-economic factors, financial well-being indicators and links, life stages and negative events, and work–life spillovers. Analysis of the five thematic categories revealed important insights regarding prior research in the field and pointed out potential directions for future research. The study fulfils an informational role by showing that financial well-being is an emerging discipline with an asymmetrical literature base. It also provides key insights into the evolution of financial well-being literature over time.