Financial inclusion as a pathway to welfare enhancement and income equality: Micro-level evidence from Nigeria

While the importance of financial inclusion as a means of poverty and income inequality reduction has long been recognised, the paths to welfare enhancement and income equality through financial inclusion remain partially acknowledged. Using micro-level data on 1 750 rural Nigerian households, this study examines the finance-welfare nexus by constructing a multi-variable financial inclusion index. The results first show that financial inclusion exerts a strong positive influence on household welfare. However, the decomposition analysis shows that middle- and high-income households gain more from financial inclusion in comparison to the targeted low-income households. Second, informal livelihood strategies, such as environmental resource extraction, crops, and livestock production, revealed reduced welfare disparities across income distributions. Therefore, for financial inclusion to alleviate welfare inequality and ensure income convergence, rural financial markets must be redesigned to allow wider access to credit, specifically for low-income and vulnerable households.     

CREDIT DEMAND AND CREDIT RATIONING IN THE INFORMAL FINANCIAL SECTOR IN UGANDA1

This paper investigates the household and individual characteristics that influence the demand and supply of informal credit in Uganda, which credit is important for improving the welfare of the poor. Informal credit demand is positively and significantly influenced by age, sex, education level, dependency ratio, household expenditure, and regional location. On the supply side, informal lenders' credit rationing behaviour is negatively and significantly influenced by age, sex, asset values, and regional location. Government policies should focus on increasing both the productive capacity and wealth of households in order to enhance the poor's creditworthiness and make them less susceptible to credit rationing by lenders.     

Financial instruments of the poor: initial findings from the South African Financial Diaries study

A new data set called the South African Financial Diaries has been produced, based on a sample of 166 households, drawn from three different areas in South Africa – Langa, Lugangeni and Diepsloot. The selected households represent a range of dwelling types and wealth categories. A unique methodology was used to create a year-long daily data set of every income, expense and financial transaction used by every one of these households. Within this sample, households used, on average, 17 different financial instruments over the course of the study year. A composite household portfolio, based on all 166 households, would have an average of four savings instruments, two insurance instruments and 11 credit instruments. The same composite household portfolio would have about 30 per cent formal instruments and 70 per cent informal instruments. Interestingly, it was found that rural households use as many financial instruments as urban ones.     

Formal and informal rural credit in the Mekong River Delta of Vietnam: Interaction and accessibility

This paper examines the factors influencing rural households’ access to credit in the Vietnamese market. Analysis confirms an interaction effect between informal and formal credit sectors in which informal credit positively influences accessibility to microcredit programs. Ignoring this interaction effect may lead to microcredit providers making loan decisions that are less than optimal. In the formal credit sector, the lowest income group faces more credit rationing than other groups, despite the fact that microcredit programs are designed to target households at the bottom of the income pyramid. Results demonstrate that land holding status, informal interest, and informal loan duration are important factors influencing access to informal credit. Factors influencing microcredit accessibility include local government employee status, credit group membership, a “poor” certificate, educational attainment, working skills and village road access. To reduce reliance on informal credit and improve microcredit accessibility, rural households should actively participate in a microcredit group.     

Nonfarm Employment and Poverty Alleviation of Rural Farm Households in Honduras

This paper analyzes the role of nonfarm income of rural farm households in Honduras. It uses the national income and expenditure survey from 1993 to 1994. Income from nonfarm wage and self-employment represents 16–25% of farm household income and is especially important for middle and higher income strata. Nonfarm wage labor is geographically concentrated in small rural towns and in the industrial free zones located in the Northern region, while self-employment is particularly developed in the Southern region. Access to nonfarm wage employment is confined to educated individuals that belong to large households, while female members of wealthier households are mainly involved in self-employment. Food security is strongly enhanced through the engagement in nonfarm activities. Moreover, nonfarm income enables farmers to purchase external inputs for improving yields and labor productivity. Suitable policies to enhance nonfarm employment include education, training, and technical assistance to reduce labor intensity in agricultural production, as well as public investment and credit services to improve access to nonfarm activities.     

Savings behaviour in low-income countries

The empirical literature on savings in low-income countrieshas exploited some remarkable data sets to shed new light onsavings behaviour in the poor agricultural households that makeup the majority of the population in such countries. A numberof conclusions have emerged: (i) the degree of consumption smoothingover seasons within the year and across years, in response tovery large income fluctuations, is higher than was supposed;(ii) the lack of complete insurance and credit markets, however,is manifested in asset stocks and asset compositions among farmers,especially small farmers, that are inefficient; (iii) the combinationof low and volatile incomes is an important cause of inefficiencyand income inequality; (iv) the proximity of formal financialinstitutions increases financial savings and crowds out informalinsurance arrangements, thus, in principle, better facilitatingfinancial intermediation; and (iv) simple life-cycle modelsof savings do not appear to explain long-term savings in low-incomesettings.     

The role of public pensions in income inequality among elderly households in China 1988–2013

Using data from the Chinese Household Income Project surveys for 1988, 1995, 2002 and 2013, we investigate the role of public pensions in income inequality among households with elderly members across two decades of pension policy reforms. We examine the distribution and role of public pensions at a national level and analyse the evolution of the contribution of public pensions to national income inequality across a much more extended time period than earlier studies, which have generally focused on regional changes over short periods. Our findings suggest that public pensions have become the most important source of income for households with elderly members on average in China, but the distribution of pension income is highly unequal, with a Gini coefficient of 0.74 in 2013. Public pension income has been the largest source of income inequality for elderly households since 2002 and contributed to more than half of total income inequality in the most recent year of the survey. This finding is robust against variations in the income inequality measures used. Additionally, our analysis suggests unequal distribution of pension benefits is the primary driver of pensioners' income inequality. Among several hypothetical policy changes, ensuring a minimum pension benefit for all existing pensioners seems to be the most fiscally effective option in reducing income inequality, with a 0.8% reduction in the Gini coefficient for a 1% increase in public pension expenditure.     

Informal Credit,Usury, or Support? A Case Study for Vietnam

The informal credit market remains an important source of finance for the poor in Vietnam. Yet, little if anything is known about the impact of informal loans on poverty and inequality, and the Vietnamese government has no policies towards the informal credit market. In the present study paper, we found that the effect of credit from friends and relatives on per capita expenditure is positive but not statistically significant. Meanwhile, the effect of credit from private moneylenders on per capita expenditure is positive and statistically significant. Borrowing from private moneylenders increases per capita expenditure of households by around 15%. Further, it reduced the poverty incidence of borrowers by around 8.5 percentage points in 2006 and significantly decreases the poverty gap index and the poverty‐severity index. Borrowing from private moneylenders also reduces expenditure inequality, albeit at a very small magnitude.     

信贷约束下的农村金融与农村收入分配关系研究

文章建立了一个简单的两期生命周期模型来考察在信贷约束下农村金融与农村收入分配不平等的作用机制。模型结论表明,在存在农村信贷约束的情况下,农村金融的发展能否起到缩小农村居民贫富差距的作用,主要取决于农业投资回报率、农村金融贷款利率和农户进入农村金融市场的成本对比：在其他条件不变的情况下,受农村金融支持的农业投资回报率越高,农村金融贷款利率越低,农户进入农村金融市场的成本越低,则农村金融的发展越有利于缩小农村居民的贫富差距。     

China＇s New Rural Income Support Policy： Impacts on Grain Production and Rural Income Inequality

I. Introduction Since the beginning of 2004, the Chinese Government has replaced its centuries-old policy of taxing agriculture by a new policy aimed at subsidizing agriculture and stimulating rural incomes. To this end, agricultural taxes – standing at around 8 percent of agricultural incomes – were drastically reduced. By now they are abolished in most provinces. Inaddition, farmers growing grain receive a direct income subsidy, new seed varieties and mechanization are subsidized, and la…     

Preferential policies and income inequality: Evidence from Special Economic Zones and Open Cities in China

This paper examines whether cities with preferential policies have higher inequality in household disposable income per capita than cities without preferential policies in urban China. “Preferential policies” refers to the autonomy and deregulation given to Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and Open Cities, allowing them to experiment with market policies and reforms, as the country moves from a state-controlled economy towards a market-oriented economy. While the effect of these policies on economic growth is extensively documented, their relationship with income inequality remains undetermined. Subgroup decompositions of income inequality, using the China Household Income Project's urban datasets of over 6000 households and 20,000 individuals from of up to 70 cities from 12 provinces, were used to identify income inequality gaps between cities with and without preferential policies. The results reveal that while income inequality increased in urban China from 1988 to 2007, the change was lower for cities awarded preferential policies across regions. Furthermore, the decompositions by region indicate that cities receiving preferential policy treatment had higher income growth but a lesser increase in income inequality than cities without preferential policies in each region. Finally, cities receiving preferential policies were able to increase the share of income of the poorest 40% of households while reducing the share of the richest 10%.     

艾滋病对我国社会经济影响

基于对我国艾滋病流行较为严重的五个省份进行的问卷调查,对比分析了931户感染者家庭和995户非感染者家庭的相关数据。研究发现,艾滋病对感染者个人及其家庭造成了极大的影响,如导致家庭结构改变、就业机会减少、劳动收入下降、医疗支出明显增大;同时也引发一系列社会经济问题,如贫富差距加大、性别不平等加剧、贫困家庭儿童教育机会减少及社会歧视扩大。最后提出了缓解艾滋病造成影响的对策建议。     

Re-estimating gender differences in income in South Africa: The implications of equivalence scales

Most studies of poverty and inequality in South Africa measure individual welfare by deflating total household resources, such as income, by household size. This per-capita method makes no adjustments for the different consumption needs of children or for household economies of scale. However, in addition to being more likely to live in households where average per-capita household income is lower compared with men, we show that women in South Africa also live in significantly larger households which include more children. These gendered differences in household composition are driven to a large degree by low rates of co-residency between men and women. We therefore investigate how adjusting household resources for the presence of children and economies of scale affects measures of the gender gap in income.     

The Impact of Social Safety Net Programs on Household Savings in Colombia

This paper seeks to understand and quantify how social safety net programs impact household savings in developing countries, considering the case of Colombia using two complementary approaches. The first approach explores how the health regime affects savings in the country. The second evaluates the impact on savings of familias en acción, a major antipoverty conditional cash transfer program. The results suggest that the savings of informal households are higher than those of formal households, because, with little incentive to enter the formal job market, informal households need to cover slightly greater non‐covered risks. The results also show that familias en acción recipients save more than non‐recipients because recipients favorably adjust their expenditure patterns.     

A panel data analysis of the formal-informal sector labour market linkages in South Africa

This study explores the labour market linkages between the informal and formal sectors, using the first four waves of the National Income Dynamics Study data. The main focus is on three groups of employed: worked in the formal sector in all waves; worked in the informal sector in all waves; moved between the two sectors across the waves. Only 27% of informal sector workers in wave 1 transitioned to the formal sector in wave 4; 38% remained in the informal sector while 33% had their status changed to either inactive or unemployed. The econometric analysis indicates that older and more educated individuals living in urban areas and coming from households with fewer old-age grant recipients are significantly more likely to work in the formal sector, whereas more educated white males are associated with a significantly greater likelihood of transitioning from informal to formal sector employment.     

农村民间自由借贷的正负效应分析

农村民间借贷在我国的发展已有很长时间,对我国农村经济的发展起到了巨大的推动作用。尤其是近几年来,农村民间借贷数额更是以惊人的速度增长。与此同时,其负面影响也越加明显。文章从正效应和负效应两个方面进行了分析,给我国农村民间借贷的进一步发展提供有益借鉴。     

Income and consumption inequality in China: A comparative approach with India

We analyse income and expenditure distribution in China in a comparative perspective with India. These countries represent extreme cases in the relationship of inequality to both wellbeing indicators. Income is more highly concentrated than expenditure in India, especially at the top of the distribution. Both types of inequality are similar in China, although expenditure is more unequally distributed than income in urban areas. China has a much stronger correlation in individual ranks and levels between the two wellbeing distributions. As a result, expenditure inequality is higher in China than in India, but income inequality much lower. This results partially from differences in population composition, such as China being more urbanized and having smaller households, but mostly from differences in conditional income distributions, especially by attained education of the household head. We show that hybrid measures of wellbeing combining income and expenditure can be useful for such cross-country comparison.     

Perceptions of informal safety nets: A case study from a South African informal settlement

The relevance and importance of informal safety nets that buffer poor households from livelihood hardships have been given little attention in South Africa's development programmes to date. This article contributes to the understanding of informal safety nets by investigating local perceptions in a South African informal settlement. The main findings of the study are that families perform an important safety net function, but that these sources of assistance can be susceptible to social isolation. Immediate neighbours and friends also play an important safety net role, but these reciprocal-based sources of assistance may be difficult to secure. Community-wide threats can have a severe impact on people's ability to engage in safety net transfers. Many of these difficulties stem from South Africa's structural unemployment crisis. This factor is the greatest danger to the future of the informal safety net system in the informal settlement.     

中国开征碳税对价格、福利及公平影响的测度

本文利用投入产出和线性需求模型分析了碳税的价格影响、福利成本以及再分配效应。征税导致占中低收入居民支出比重较大的基本消费品价格大幅上涨,如电热水气、房屋、公共交通、食品等;从等价性变化、补偿性变化的角度看,城镇居民的福利损失随收入降低而上升,而农村居民中中等收入家庭损失最大;Atkinson公平指数显示碳税前后贫富差距有所扩大。因此,碳税具有一定累退性。但是,碳税边际福利成本及其收入差距影响并不大,因此政府可以通过转移支付手段缓解其负面冲击。     

Nature and determinants of household retirement savings behaviour in South Africa

This study investigates the savings behaviour among South African households using the General Household Survey data for the periods 2002–04 and 2008–10. The age-cohort analysis shows that households achieve their income peaks when the household heads are in their early forties, earlier than in most other countries. Although initial support for the life-cycle hypothesis framework in the form of smoothed consumption was found from multivariate analysis, a closer examination reveals that the consumption–income ratio is also smooth over the age and cohort variables. This indicates that savings rates do not follow a hump-shape pattern as required in the life-cycle hypothesis framework. While households are seen to be able to maintain their consumption in retirement years through government grants, a large portion of the grants seem to be utilised for savings. This shows that the government grants have the dual effect of sustaining consumption levels while disincentivising savings during working years.