Financial inclusion and poverty: a tale of forty-five thousand households

ABSTRACT

Using a new nationally representative survey data covering approximately 45,000 Indian households, we examine the effects of financial inclusion on poverty. We construct a multidimensional indicator of financial inclusion and examine the effects of financial inclusion on multiple measures of poverty including the household Poverty Probability Index (PPI), household deprivation scores, and poverty line. We find that financial inclusion has a strong poverty-reducing effect. This finding is consistent across the different measures of poverty used, and alternative ways of measures financial inclusion. These results underpin the importance of financial inclusion and the need for its promotion across countries.     

The Site of Diversalizing: The Accomplishment of Inclusion in Intergenerational Dance

In this study, we aim to revisit theorizing on inclusion by turning to practice theory. Challenging the individualist ontological assumption of most diversity and inclusion studies, we follow a practice-based theory of diversity to understand how an inclusive social order is accomplished. Our empirical case centres on the real-time practicing of a dance production where diversity was central to its production process as well as final performance. Using a research strategy of connected situationalism, we uncover and document three practices: mixing, inverting and affirming, that are recursively intertwined into a nexus, producing inclusion. We advance the inclusion literature by proposing the notion ‘a site of diversalizing’ that processually captures the accomplishment of multiplicity through practices and their associations in time and space, highlighting the necessity to understand ‘practice’ as the entanglement of bodily, discursive and material components, and approaching context as comprised of mutually constituting relations instead of micro/macro levels.     

Remittance and financial inclusion in refugee migrants: inverse probability of treatment weighting using the propensity score

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the impact on remittances on financial inclusion of refugee migrants. While financial inclusion is gaining traction in the humanitarian and development literature, the linkage with the potential to improve the wellbeing of refugees, who are part of an upward spiral in numbers, has not been tackled. We examine World Bank survey data of 1041 Syrian refugees, using the inverse probability of treatment weighting propensity score analysis (IPTW). The method minimises the influence of outliers and addresses unobservable and missing data biases, which can plague survey based data. We observe that common indicators of financial inclusion when applied to refugees, given their limited access to formal financial services, may introduce a bias as the informal financial sector and excluded formal financial sector services do contribute to inclusiveness. We adopt a broader protocol for our data, measuring financial inclusion through six metrics stemming from G20 proposals. Overall, there is an opportunity to deepen financial inclusion for refugees who receive or send remittances. The possibility of expanding the financial inclusion options, and for this to percolate through to greater social inclusion, proffers practical commercial steps and policy enabling actions.     

Street harassment is marketplace discrimination: The impact of street harassment on young female consumers’ marketplace experiences

This study brings street harassment to the retailing and consumer services literature streams. Street harassment describes unwanted interactions in public spaces between strangers or customers and is often motivated by a person’s gender, sexual orientation, or gender expression. To date, marketers have overlooked the occurrence of street harassment in retail establishments and consumer service domains, such as in theaters, public markets, recreational areas, and shopping malls. This work empirically demonstrates the extent to which young women in Nepal experience harassment from men in the marketplace and the various tactics they employ to lessen it. Furthermore, this research exposes the extent to which Nepali men admit to participating in verbal, physical, or visual harassment of women in various retailing and service settings. The article concludes with a discussion of theoretical, managerial, and societal implications and encourages public policy officials to treat street harassment as a criminal offense.     

Empirical Likelihood Approach for Aligning Information from Multiple Surveys

When two surveys carried out separately in the same population have common variables, it might be desirable to adjust each survey's weights so that they give equal estimates for the common variables. This problem has been studied extensively and has often been referred to as alignment or numerical consistency. We develop a design-based empirical likelihood approach for alignment and estimation of complex parameters defined by estimating equations. We focus on a general case when a single set of adjusted weights, which can be applied to both common and non-common variables, is produced for each survey. The main contribution of the paper is to show that the impirical log-likelihood ratio statistic is pivotal in the presence of alignment constraints. This pivotal statistic can be used to test hypotheses and derive confidence regions. Hence, the empirical likelihood approach proposed for alignment possesses the self-normalisation property, under a design-based approach. The proposed approach accommodates large sampling fractions, stratification and population level auxiliary information. It is particularly well suited for inference about small domains, when data are skewed. It includes implicit adjustments when the samples considerably differ in size. The confidence regions are constructed without the need for variance estimates, joint-inclusion probabilities, linearisation and re-sampling.     

Race,ethnicity, and telecommunications policy issues of access and representation: Centering communities of color and their concerns

This paper examines how and why activist groups representing marginalized communities of color are increasingly engaging in communications technology policy issues, particularly in relation to issues of digital access and representation. It explores three distinct but related case studies to disentangle the issues and concerns of a range of communities of color, and the challenges and opportunities for their advocates in navigating the highly technical communications technology policy arena: the first case study, which centers on the NAACP's original opposition to net neutrality, reveals the primacy of issues surrounding the “digital divide” to populations of color, and the difficulties of engaging in technical conversations surrounding Internet governance when issues of access persist. Meanwhile, the second case reviews the campaign by Free Press to promote set-top box liberalization as an issue of representation and diversity to both policymakers and citizens. The final case, which examines the work of the Tribal International Carrier to build an alternative internet service network for Native populations, highlights the precarity which organizations must strategically navigate in order to mitigate the influence of both the state and large corporations over Internet policy issues in order to both serve and represent their constituents. In all, this paper presents and extends upon a novel approach to communications policy research, foregrounding the need to integrate critical race frameworks and, relatedly, to center the breadth, depth, and lived experiences of communities of color, which can therein facilitate more inclusive digital media and communication environments and policy structures.     

The impact of banking services on poverty: Evidence from sub-district level for Bangladesh

The extent to which banking services can reduce poverty is under question as recent experimental evidence has suggested that there is no impact. Our findings, based on survey and administrative data, are to the contrary. We compile a unique dataset of banking measures and poverty indicators at the level of Bangladesh’s 544 administrative sub-districts. We find a relationship between banking services and poverty reduction, and show that the relationship works through the deposit channel rather than the credit channel. We exploit variation in branch placement by sub-district between 2010 and 2015 to implement a difference-in-difference estimation approach. We also estimate ordinary least squares and fixed effects models to explore the role of factors other than banking services in poverty incidence. Broad findings supporting a role for the deposit channel, but not the credit channel, are confirmed. These results have significant policy implications as governments in developing countries are actively involved in promoting financial inclusion through the banking sector.     

Is the financing of tourism by international financial institutions inclusive? A proposal for measurement

It is acknowledged that tourism can have a great potential for reducing poverty; however, the growth of tourism has stagnated in financially excluded areas because of the difficulty local tourism businesses have in accessing the financial system. International financial institutions advocate the promotion of tourism as a development tool and in the fight against financial exclusion. This paper presents a tool for measuring whether the performance of these organizations is inclusive regarding tourism financing. The results obtained from applying this tool to the analysis of projects in Latin America and the Caribbean show that the financing provided for tourism projects in this region is not inclusive.     

Liberalisation,Financial Risk,and Formal Financial Participation in Pakistan: Hyperinflationary Microeconomic Responses to Moderate Volatility in a Developing Economy

With formal financial inclusion much lower than its neighbours, Pakistan has been the focus of intensive efforts to ‘bank’ the ‘unbanked’. Yet, after a drop in deposits in the wake of Pakistan’s 2008 crisis, deposits are still struggling to return to their mid-1990s’ levels. Focusing on distortions in the banking sector, the Central Bank attributes this to ‘crowding out’ amidst a steep rise in the propensity to consume. This study draws on extensive fieldwork, identifying heightened financial risk driven by multifaceted monetary instability since the liberalisation of the rupee and of Pakistani markets. It proposes that heightened monetary risk has translated into a broad-based shift out of the rupee akin to hyperinflationary responses, but revealed in relatively moderate monetary conditions. It argues that, exposed to global markets, national currency itself has become a risky asset, pushing store-of-value and transactional holdings into unconventional liquid assets. This suggests that monetary stability, expressed in the currency itself and in broader pricing patterns in the economy, is key to the uptake of financial intermediation. The issue at the root of disintermediation in Pakistan, it is argued, is less one of ‘crowding out’ than of disruption to the role of national currency as money itself.     

The social construction of “shared growth”: Zambia Sugar and the uneven terrain of social benefit

Recent years have witnessed a growing trend in agricultural investment and large‐scale farmland acquisition in the Global South and a rapid expansion of scholarship and public debate over the nature, consequences, and desirability of these trends. The polarization of this debate into “win/lose” narratives raises the question of whether, and under what conditions, the logic of capital accumulation driving farmland acquisition and investment can engender broad‐based social benefits akin to “shared growth.” This paper sheds light on this question through a detailed look at the recent expansion of Zambia Sugar's Nakambala Estate in Mazabuka, Zambia. We explore outcomes linked to two of the most prominent pathways through which social benefits are said to accrue: smallholder incorporation and employment. Findings demonstrate the unevenness of outcomes linked to both pathways, with the concrete benefits both claimed and observed through some measures quickly eroding under the weight of alternative performance metrics. The unevenness produced by the intensification of capitalist relations is manifested not just between those differentially positioned with respect to the incoming investment (“outgrower,” “employee,” and “land loser”) but within each of those conditions. This ambiguity opens spaces for competing representations of the promises and pitfalls of these processes, while highlighting the shaky ground on which shared growth and inclusive business agendas stand.