References: Coping with money & security

The key studies and reviews behind these pages – organised by topic, so you can see exactly what each claim on the site is based on.

Financial insecurity

  • Mullainathan, S. & Shafir, E. (2013). Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much. Times Books. The foundational study of how scarcity captures the mind – the source behind this page’s point that financial insecurity is a felt, cognitive state as much as a financial one, and why constant monitoring becomes the default setting.
  • Walker, R. (2014). The Shame of Poverty. Oxford University Press. A cross-cultural study of how financial hardship is experienced through shame regardless of its cause – the source behind this page’s point that shame attaches easily, even when nothing was mismanaged.
  • Haushofer, J. & Fehr, E. (2014). “On the psychology of poverty.” Science, 344(6186), 862-867. Links financial stress to narrowed, short-term decision-making – the source behind this page’s point that insecurity crowds out longer-term thinking, not just the present moment.
  • Ridley, M., Rao, G., Schilbach, F. & Patel, V. (2020). “Poverty, depression, and anxiety: Causal evidence and mechanisms.” Science, 370(6522), eaay0214. Recent causal evidence linking financial hardship to mental health outcomes – the source behind this page’s point that persistent anxiety or disrupted sleep is worth raising with a GP rather than pushing through alone.

Retirement money worry

  • Lusardi, A. & Mitchell, O.S. (2011). “Financial Literacy and Retirement Planning in the United States.” Journal of Pension Economics & Finance, 10(4), 509–525. Links financial literacy directly to the likelihood of planning for retirement at all – the source behind this page’s point that this worry isn’t purely a knowledge gap, since even literacy alone doesn’t resolve it.
  • Hershfield, H.E., Goldstein, D.G., Sharpe, W.F., Fox, J., Yeykelis, L., Carstensen, L.L. & Bailenson, J.N. (2011). “Increasing Saving Behavior Through Age-Progressed Renderings of the Future Self.” Journal of Marketing Research, 48(SPL), S23–S37. Found that people save more for retirement when they feel a stronger connection to their future self – the source behind this page’s framing of retirement saving as a relationship with a future self who can feel like a stranger.
  • Bogan, V.L. & Fertig, A.R. (2018). “Mental Health and Retirement Savings: Confounding Issues with Compounding Interest.” Health Economics, 27(2), 404–425. Found that psychological distress is associated with significantly lower retirement savings and account values – the source behind this page’s point that distress and under-saving feed each other in a loop.
  • Van Dalen, H.P., Henkens, K. & Hershey, D.A. (2017). “Why Do Older Adults Avoid Seeking Financial Advice? Adviser Anxiety in the Netherlands.” Ageing and Society, 37(6), 1268–1290. Found that nearly a third of respondents felt moderate to severe anxiety at the prospect of seeking financial advice – the source behind this page’s point that avoiding the numbers can feel protective while making the underlying problem harder to fix.
  • Liu, Y., et al. (2026). “Persistent Financial Adversity and Cognitive Ageing: A Life Course Investigation.” Innovation in Aging. A 70-year UCL study following the 1946 British birth cohort, finding that chronic financial strain in adulthood was linked to measurably faster brain ageing decades later – the source behind this page’s point that the loop between money worry and poor planning isn’t only psychological.