Financial resilience alleviates financial anxiety in a global context: multilevel modeling on cross-national socioeconomic development indicators

Purpose Financial anxiety, demonstrating worried and unhealthy feelings toward money-related issues, is a crucial public health concern. Financial resilience, a financial coping capability in the face of adversity, can promote financial well-being and holistic health. However, the association between financial resilience and financial anxiety remains to be examined, particularly lacking a global overview. This study builds on multisystemic resilience theory, multisource global data and multilevel modeling techniques to originally examine the distinction between subjective and objective facets, the inner pathways to financial anxiety and the moderating roles of national socioeconomic development indicators. Design/methodology/approach Hierarchical linear modeling, multilevel estimations in instrumental variable analysis and heterogeneity analysis and multilevel structural equation modeling were utilized to analyze the five merged data sources from 100,134 adults in 131 economies from 2021 to 2022. Findings After controlling country-level indicators, i.e. GDP per capita, extreme poverty, human development, social welfare expenditure, economic freedom and individual-level covariates, subjective and objective financial resilience were still significantly negatively associated with financial anxiety. The effects of subjective financial resilience were greater than those of the objective facet. Extreme poverty and social welfare expenditure had significant cross-level moderating effects. Results were robust after addressing endogeneity issues and heterogeneity analyses across population and regional subgroups. Subjective financial resilience had significant multilevel mediation effects between objective financial resilience and financial anxiety. Originality/value This study contributes a global development perspective and a cross-national comparative approach to the literature of financial resilience and financial anxiety. It provides implications for international policies and services on socioeconomic interventions, sustainable development and financial health promotion.