Abstract
The study examines the effects of financial inclusion services—mobile money and other alternative financial service options—on consumption expenditure and poverty status by employing the augmented inverse probability weighted (AIPW) estimator to address selection bias and unobserved heterogeneity in the adoption of these services. Using a nationally representative survey data in Ghana, the results show that adoption of financial inclusion services increases household consumption expenditure and also decreases the probability of being poor. Specifically, the effects are larger for adoption of other alternative financial service options relative to adoption of mobile money services. Estimating the interaction effects shows that there are complementarities between adoption of mobile money and other alternative financial service options. The results also show considerable heterogeneity with effects largely observed in male-headed households compared to female-headed households. The results suggest that adoption of financial inclusion services could serve as welfare improvement strategies in develo** countries and draw policy attention to the gendered welfare effects.
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Data Availability
The study relied on publicly available data from the seventh round of Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS 7) collected by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), Accra.
Notes
Based on the available datasets, this study could not obtain valid instruments. Interestingly, the study focuses on the interaction effects of alternative FI services. Therefore, obtaining a valid instrument for the various combinations of FI services will be challenging.
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Acknowledgements
Data from the seventh round of Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS 7) collected by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), Accra, is gratefully acknowledged. We also thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on the earlier versions of the manuscript.
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Richmond Atta-Ankomah was involved in conceptualization, formal analysis, writing—original draft, conceived the study and downloaded the data and performed part of the statistical analysis, contributed to develo** the concept and writing the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript. Charles Yaw Okyere helped in conceptualization, writing—original draft, conceived the study and contributed to develo** the concept and writing the manuscript.
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The study did not need ethical approval as the analyses relied on a publicly available secondary data (GLSS 7). This data source has been used by several researchers undertaking welfare analyses in Ghana.
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Atta-Ankomah, R., Okyere, C.Y. Welfare Effects of Financial Inclusion Services in Ghana: A Comparative Analysis of Mobile Money and Other Financial Services. Glob Soc Welf 10, 83–92 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40609-022-00234-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40609-022-00234-x