AARP conducted this survey to understand public opinion on consumer financial protection issues. More specifically, this survey sought to understand the public’s opinion on financial regulatory practices and gauge their perceived importance of these specific regulations.
Key findings include:
- Almost all adults age 50+ believe it is important to enforce financial regulatory practices that protect consumers from unethical practices. These findings are consistent with research conducted by AARP in 2010 on consumer financial protection issues. Support for these protections has remained strong and in some cases it has grown in the last two years.
- Roughly half of adults age 50+ (46%) believe there should be more government oversight of financial companies. Across political parties, an overwhelming majority of adults age 50+ support the individual provisions of the Wall Street Reform law enacted in 2010, despite fewer claiming there should be more government oversight of financial companies.
- Awareness of the Wall Street Reform law is modest with six in ten adults age 50+ (63%) aware that a law was passed in 2010 in response to the financial crisis. When informed there are currently proposals in Congress to repeal the law, only 20% favor doing so. Almost six in ten (58%) believe the reforms contained in the law should be allowed to take effect.
The survey was conducted for AARP by Woelfel Research, an independent research firm. Interviews were conducted December 12, 2011 through February 12, 2012 among a nationally representative sample of 1,003 adults age 50+. This sample was boosted to obtain additional interviews with African-Americans and Hispanics. All media inquiries should be directed to (202) 434-2560. For all other questions, contact the author at Lskufca@aarp.org.
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