Publication: Financial Inclusion and Economic Development: A Review of the Data and Evidence
Loading...
Published
2025-01-09
ISSN
Date
2025-01-09
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper reviews the impact of financial inclusion on economic development outcomes. It highlights the benefits of financial inclusion, including greater savings, improved resilience to economic shocks, and higher levels of economic empowerment, among others. It looks deeper into both the effects of financial inclusion on marginalized groups, like women and the poor, while also examining the impacts of different types of financial instruments, like digital payments and financial accounts. The paper further explores the role that government payment programs and regulatory actions can play in inducing greater financial inclusion, highlighting the need for more policies, products, and incentives to promote greater adoption of financial services for sustainable development.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Ansar, Saniya; Klapper, Leora; Singer, Dorothe. 2025. Financial Inclusion and Economic Development: A Review of the Data and Evidence. Policy Research Working Paper; 11021. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/42650 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication The Importance of Financial Education for the Effective Use of Formal Financial Services(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-03)This paper examines global data on unbanked and underbanked consumers to highlight the role that improved financial literacy and capability could play in motivating and enabling the safe and beneficial use of financial services. The paper uses data from Global Findex, a demand-side survey on ownership and use of accounts at formal financial institutions. The paper reviews the self-reported barriers to account ownership and use cited by unbanked adults, and identifies the challenges faced by account owners who could not use an account without help. Together, these issues point to the importance of financial education to improve digital and financial literacy skills, in addition to product design that considers customer abilities, and strong consumer safeguards to ensure that customers benefit from financial access.Publication The Global Findex Database 2021(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-06-29)The fourth edition of the Global Findex offers a lens into how people accessed and used financial services during the COVID-19 pandemic, when mobility restrictions and health policies drove increased demand for digital services of all kinds. The Global Findex is the world’s most comprehensive database on financial inclusion. It is also the only global demand-side data source allowing for global and regional cross-country analysis to provide a rigorous and multidimensional picture of how adults save, borrow, make payments, and manage financial risks. Global Findex 2021 data were collected from national representative surveys of about 128,000 adults in more than 120 economies. The latest edition follows the 2011, 2014, and 2017 editions, and it includes a number of new series measuring financial health and resilience and contains more granular data on digital payment adoption, including merchant and government payments. The Global Findex is an indispensable resource for financial service practitioners, policy makers, researchers, and development professionals.Publication Financial Risk Management in Agriculture(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12)The ability to manage financial risk is especially important for people earning their living through agriculture. Many farmers only get paid once or twice a year, and households need to stretch their earnings across the year by saving or borrowing money. Moreover, agricultural production faces a variety of risks related to both production and markets because of their exposure to weather and disease shocks. Households engaged in agriculture may thus especially benefit from financial inclusion—access to and use of formal financial services. This paper explores the topic of financial risk management in agriculture—how adults who rely on growing crops or raising livestock as their household's main source of income manage financial risk and use financial services. The paper summarizes new data based on a nationally representative survey of about 15,000 adults in 15 lower-middle- and low-income Sub-Saharan African economies collected as part of the World Bank's Global Findex database. The majority of these adults reported suffering a bad harvest or significant livestock loss in the past five years, and most bear the entire financial risk of such a loss. Most adults in agricultural households lack the financial tools -- such as insurance, accounts, savings, and credit -- that could help them manage financial risks.Publication Global Findex Database 2017(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018-04-19)The Global Findex database is the world's most comprehensive set of data on how people make payments, save money, borrow and manage risk. Launched in 2011, it includes more than 100 financial inclusion indicators in a format allowing users to compare access to financial services among adults worldwide -- including by gender, age and household income. This third edition of the database was compiled in 2017 using nationally representative surveys in more than 140 developing and high-income countries. The database includes updated indicators on access to and use of formal and informal financial services. It features additional data on Fintech and digital financial services, including the use of mobile phones and internet technology to conduct financial transactions. Global Findex data is utilized to track progress toward the World Bank's goal of Universal Financial Access by 2020 and the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. The data also is a source for the G20 Financial Inclusion Indicators and a benchmark for policymakers seeking to expand access to and use of financial services. Lastly, this report discusses opportunities to expand access to financial services among the unbanked, and ways to promote greater use of digital financial services among the underbanked.Publication Financial Inclusion and the Role of the Post Office(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-10)Given their widespread presence in rural and poor areas, post offices can play a leading role in advancing financial inclusion. Yet little is known about the type of clients that post offices reach through their financial service offerings as compared with clients of traditional financial institutions (such as commercial banks). This paper documents and analyzes account ownership patterns at post offices in comparison with traditional financial institutions, using the Global Financial Inclusion Indicators (Global Findex) database, which collects data on account ownership at post offices in 60 countries where postal accounts are offered. Controlling for a host of individual characteristics and country fixed effects, the paper finds that post offices are relatively more likely than traditional financial institutions to provide accounts to individuals who are most likely to be from financially vulnerable groups, such as the poor, less educated, and those out of the labor force. The paper also uses data from the Universal Postal Union to explore the degree to which different postal business models and the size of the postal network help explain differences in account ownership patterns. The results suggest that post offices can boost account ownership by acting as cash-merchants for transactional financial services, such as electronic government and remittance payments, and that partnerships between the post office and other financial institutions coincide with a higher bank account penetration. The paper also finds that the size of the postal network matters; the larger the network-relative to the network of traditional financial institutions -- the more likely it is that adults have an account at the post office.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
No results found.