Koomson Isaac, Ansong David, Okumu Moses, Achulo Solomon
Centre for the Business and Economics of Health, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD Australia.
Network for Socioeconomic Research and Advancement (NESRA), Accra, Ghana.
Glob Soc Welf. 2023;10(1):93-103. doi: 10.1007/s40609-022-00259-2. Epub 2022 Dec 9.
Financial literacy can be critical to reducing poverty, but limited evidence exists on the mechanisms of change. Guided by the financial capability framework, this study examines the direct effects of financial literacy on poverty and the indirect effect through financial inclusion and entrepreneurship, using data from wave 5 of the InterMedia Financial Inclusion Insights Program for Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. We also examined how the relationships differ by gender and locality. Overall, the endogeneity-corrected results suggest that an increase in financial literacy is associated with a 6.9% decrease in poverty. We found that entrepreneurship and financial inclusion act as mechanisms of change through which financial literacy decreases poverty, with the findings differing by gender and locality. These findings point to the poverty-reducing effect of financial literacy, mainly in Tanzania, followed by Kenya and Uganda. The results contribute to understanding how financial literacy and poverty interact and can inform contextually relevant interventions and policies.
金融知识对减贫可能至关重要，但关于变化机制的证据有限。本研究以金融能力框架为指导，利用来自肯尼亚、坦桑尼亚和乌干达的国际媒介金融包容性洞察项目第5轮的数据，考察了金融知识对贫困的直接影响以及通过金融包容性和创业的间接影响。我们还研究了这些关系如何因性别和地区而异。总体而言，经过内生性校正的结果表明，金融知识的提高与贫困率下降6.9%相关。我们发现，创业和金融包容性是金融知识减少贫困的变化机制，研究结果因性别和地区而异。这些发现表明了金融知识的减贫作用，主要体现在坦桑尼亚，其次是肯尼亚和乌干达。研究结果有助于理解金融知识与贫困之间的相互作用，并可为因地制宜的干预措施和政策提供参考。
