Recent Australian studies (Moore, S.M., and Ohtsuka, K. (1997). Journal of Gambling
Studies, 13, 207-236) have revealed a strong youth interest in gambling in Australia,
as reflected in current participation levels, future intentions and attitudes. Implicit
in much of this attitudinal research is that youth gambling is strongly influenced
by the familial, social and cultural norms to which young people are exposed. In this
paper, we investigate the hypothesis that gambling can be understood in terms of variations
in economic socialization, namely, the way in which children learn about money, risk,
and saving. A school survey of 505 adolescents (aged 15-17 years) showed that over
60% of adolescents were gambling annually and that 3.5% scored in the problematic
range on the DSM-IV-J (Fisher, S.E. (1999). Addiction Research, 7, 509-538). More
frequent gambling was associated with parental and peer gambling and pro-gambling
attitudes, but unrelated to adolescents' attitudes towards economic concepts. Nevertheless,
in partial support of the hypotheses, adolescents whose parents taught them about
keeping to a budget, saving money, and maintaining their finances were less likely
to express an interest in future gambling.