I have read your paper, “Humans have been overlooked in financial well-being research and policy.” From my reading, I might have titled the paper “The evolving attempt to make sense of financial well-being.” I commend the author(s) for trying to make sense of the literature that uses the term financial well-being (often very carelessly). I really like how you blend the academic and non-academic literature in your review.
My struggles with your paper are primarily related to your conclusions that financial well-being has not been defined or operationalized and that the human perspective has been left out of the equation. While I agree that there is not a single accepted definition of financial well-being, I do not agree that is due to a clear human-centered definition not existing. Rather, it is the result of a lack of acceptance (or perhaps awareness or understanding) of the research that defined and measured financial well-being from extensive qualitative research with humans across ages, genders, and objective financial circumstances. The largest of these studies was conducted and reported by the CFPB (which you cite and note as an exception). The dimensional measures developed by Netemeyer et al. (2018) were built from this extensive qualitative research (as was the uni-dimensional CFPB measure). The Brüggen et al. (2017) definition was published after the CFPB qualitative was released in 2015 and just before the Netemeyer et al. study in 2018. Netemeyer et al. demonstrated that current money management stress and expected future financial security are distinct constructs across several studies. In addition, there have been a number of papers published since 2018 that demonstrate the ways in which current money management stress and expected future financial security operate differently. The measures of these two dimensions have been validated across several cultural contexts (e.g., Warmath et al. 2021 in the Journal of Consumer Affairs). Warmath also published an interesting review of the evolution of the financial well-being construct in 2022 that you might find helpful (in Brenda Cude and Giani Niccolini (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Financial Literacy).
While I agree that there is a lack of agreement or consistency in the definition and measurement of financial well-being, I do not agree that returning to the human again will fix that lack of agreement. Financial well-being is not the only construct suffering from this situation. There is likely a larger issue regarding the requirements to achieve agreement among academics. That larger issue is not considered in this paper.
Another issue I would like to point out is the somewhat random insertion of drivers and/or interventions at various points in the paper. I wonder whether the paper might be strengthened by making the definition, measurement and driver/intervention arguments in separate sections before pulling things together in the conclusion. That might also allow the author(s) to develop each argument more. There are several points in the paper where statements are made without elaboration and, occasionally, without citation. I also think the paper would be strengthened from a more rigorous application of a review methodology.
I think that the lack of acceptance of more focused and recent research on financial well-being is an important topic. I would encourage the author(s) to consider how we can move forward rather than repeating what has already been done – especially when what has already been done has not achieved acceptance. While qualitative research is important for elaborating on our current understanding, future research should stand on the shoulders of past research. This approach will do much more to improve the financial well-being of humans than entering an academic hamster wheel.