Parents need to be good role models to help their children make sensible financial decisions, according to Adam Hancock and his team, from East Caronlina University in the US. Their work highlights that parents who argue about finances contribute to increasing credit card debt among their children during their students years. Their work is published online in Springer's Journal of Family and Economic Issues. Credit card debt among college students has been a growing concern for researchers and policymakers over the last decade. In addition, there is growing concern among educators that more students are dropping out of school, not because of academic failure, but because of financial reasons, and credit card especially. Hancock and colleagues' study is the first to examine how parental interactions, and financial knowledge and attitudes may have a cumulative effect   on the number of credit cards students own and their level of credit card debt. The researchers analyzed data for 420 undergraduate students from seven different American universities, who took part in the College Student Financial Literacy Survey. According to the online survey, nearly two-thirds of students had a credit card, and nearly a third had more than one. Those students who reported that their parents argued about finances were more likely to have more than two cards than the students whose parents who did not argue about finances. In terms of debt, those students who had two or more credit cards were nearly three times more likely to report having credit card debt over $500. The researchers conclude, "It is clear that the influence of parents cannot be neglected. Researchers, educators and policymakers should work in finding effective ways to increase the positive financial behaviors for college students. We need to help students learn financial skills and establish healthy financial attitudes at earlier ages to prevent poor financial habits from taking root. " When college students have credit card debt, they may   _  .
quit school fail in their exams study financial knowledge have more credit cards