Inclusive human development effect of financial inclusion in sub-Saharan Africa: A gender perspective

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of financial inclusion on inclusive human development in a panel of 35 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the years 2011, 2014 and 2017 from a gender perspective. Different methods, including fixed effect and random effect models, Tobit and quantile regressions, are used for the estimates. We find that financial inclusion improves inclusive human development. In addition, the effect of women's financial empowerment is stronger than that of men. Moreover, we find a complementary effect of financial account ownership and mobile money usage in the achievement of inclusive human development. Furthermore, the increasing effects of financial inclusion are greater in countries with lower inclusive human development than those with higher inclusive human development. African governments should therefore improve financial inclusion, particularly female financial inclusion, to achieve higher inclusive human development.