After studying the data from the survey of Consumer Finances, there were many different variables that possibly were affecting each other. There are many reasons why people experience either financial freedom or financial hardships. Some could argue that there is a relationship between a person's demographic variables and socioeconomic variables that cause either the freedom or hardships. We believe that in our study we will show how certain variables of consumer credit affect other variables as well.
First we had to compare the demographic variables (age, gender, etc) to the socioeconomic variables (education, employment, etc) to see if any relationship between the two existed. Our first hypothesis is that gender does affect a person's current housing status. This is of interest to us for many reasons. After learning more about gender roles in society, it is observed that women are perceived to have a restricted financial capacity than a male, therefore, is more unlikely to afford such luxuries as a home or home mortgage. Also, the discrimination of women is a problem in society that still must be corrected. Many steps have been taken in order to end the discrimination of women in the workplace, like the Equal Pay Act which was passed to ensure equal pay for woman for equal work. Nevertheless, the independent variable of our hypothesis is gender (SEX) and the dependant variable is a person's housing tenure (TENURE). This is so because a person's current housing situation could never affect their gender, but their gender could possible affect their housing situation.
We must next perform a statistical analysis of the data in order to prove our hypothesis. The variables that we are looking at are SEX and TENURE. These variables are both nominal scales of data. Knowing this, the Chi Squared test of independence is an appropriate statistical technique that will help prove our belief.
