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on Financial Literacy and Education |
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Issue of 2018‒01‒15
one paper chosen by Viviana Di Giovinazzo Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca |
| By: | Cyn-Young Park (Asian Development Bank); Rogelio Mercado Jr. (South East Asian Central Banks (SEACEN) Research and Training Centre) |
| Abstract: | This paper introduces a new index of financial inclusion for 151 economies using principal component analysis to compute weights for aggregating 9 indicators of access, availability, and usage. It then assesses the impact of financial inclusion on poverty and income inequality. The results provide evidence that high and middle-high-income economies with high financial inclusion have significantly lower poverty, while no such relation exists for middle-low and low-income economies. The nonlinearities in the cross-country determinants and impacts of financial inclusion on poverty and income inequality across income groups are important to choosing the appropriate policies for achieving inclusive growth in different development stages. |
| Keywords: | financial inclusion, poverty, income inequality |
| JEL: | G18 O11 O16 |
| Date: | 2018–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sea:wpaper:wp29&r=fle |