Many of the 2030 sustainable development goals have targeted the strengthening of financial inclusion, which is currently a key policy priority on the agendas of most governments in developing nations. The process of facilitating banking and financial services for individuals is called financial inclusion, which supports growth and the broader development goals of an economy. Although economic growth and human capital development indices have been analyzed using different proxy variables, insufficient attention has been paid to constructing a composite index for measuring this to achieve greater sustainability in terms of the economy, communities, and the environment. This study sought to address this gap using secondary data from eight countries in South Asia from 2004 to 2018. A financial inclusion index was developed through principal component analysis using an econometric approach of panel data with vector error correction models and a Granger causality test. As per the results of the study, financial inclusion has a long-run impact on human capital development in South Asian countries, whereas it has a short-run positive impact on economic growth. Domestic credits to the private sector also impact the short-run growth and human capital development in the economy. This ensures the confidence of vulnerable communities in their economy, as well as information management, and allows for quality enhancements of transactions with fewer environmental impacts. Government intervention to improve access to financial services, including ATMs and commercial banking, is one policy allowing digital finance to accelerate the achievement of sustainable development goals in South Asian countries.

The potential stock of human capital among youth is a leading factor for accelerating the economic growth of a country via maximising full capacity utilisation. The main purpose of this study is to identify the factors influencing youth unemployment in Sri Lanka using a subsample of 3,562 youths derived from the Sri Lanka Labour Force Survey, 2018. Findings stemmed from binary logistic regression analysis revealed that skill mismatch, including language and digital literacy and geographical mismatch, including province, influences youth unemployment in Sri Lanka. Moreover, this study showed that the probability of being unemployed is high among young females, youths who are educated up to post-secondary level, vocationally trained youths, and youths with high levels of language and digital literacy. The findings highlight the importance of improving the country's human capital in terms of education and vocational training and allow policymakers to rethink the possible reforms in the education and vocational training systems to improve knowledge, skills, attitudes, and the mindsets of the youth targeting job orientations.

Holding more than one job is called moonlighting. This creates both positive and negative impacts on individual workers as well as on the economy. This paper limits itself only to the impacts on the individual worker. This study examines the impacts of moonlighting on workers' per-hour total earnings and wage differentials. The Sri Lanka Labour Force Survey conducted by the Department of Census and Statistics of Sri Lanka in 2017 has been used for the study. The study uses 28,671 employed persons, and 2,351 are holding secondary employment. The Endogenous switching regression model has been used for the analysis. The Endogenous switching regression allows the comparison of the factors associated with total log-hourly earnings between moonlighters and non-moonlighters with and without moonlighting. Moonlighters are generally a disadvantaged group when compared with non-moonlighters. However, moonlighting facilitates the reduction of the wage gap between moonlighters and nonmoonlighters. Moonlighting by moonlighters and moonlighting by non-moonlighters are economically optimal solutions for both groups. Therefore, it is evident that moonlighting has increased economic welfare. Further, it reduces wage disparities among workers in terms of ethnic groups and gender and thus leading to increased gender and ethnic welfare, while it causes to expand earning disparities by residential sectors leading to reduce their economic welfare. Creating formal opportunities for moonlighting, encouraging moonlighting among females, minor ethnic groups etc. Through micro-financing programmes would be important policy options for empowering vulnerable groups in the labour market of Sri Lanka, according to the findings of this study.

The main objective of this research is to identify the impact of social media addiction on the labour supply of employees in Sri Lanka. The study covers 390 employees through a questionnaire survey. The study used the endogenous switching regression model for modelling average working hours per week day of social media addicts and non-addicts comparatively. Age, marital status, executive employment, type of social media and commuting distance to the workplace are the key factors associated with social media addiction of workers as in the selection function of the model. Working hours of social media addicts are affected by age, gender and executive employment while the working hours of non addicts are mainly affected by gender, marriage, executive employment, years of education and monthly net salary. Social media addiction of non addicts causes reduction of average hours of work per week day, while hours of work of social media addicts increase, if they have given up social media addiction. Institution specific policy insights are also proposed to increase the performance of employees.

No abstract

The aging population, due to the increasing life expectancy and decreasing fertility rates as a result of the demographic transition in Sri Lanka, has created a number of challenges within the labour market. Elders re-entering the labour market is a common phenomenon in countries with rapid population ageing due to the lack of funding for the welfare of the elderly population. The main objective of this research is to compare the genderbased factors affecting Sri Lanka's elderly labour supply. Secondary data of the Sri Lanka Labour Force Survey ( 2018) was used for this study, while three Logit Regression models were used for the analysis on labour supply decision making, using 5,897 males, 7,325 females and 13,222 of total elders above the age of 60 years as samples.According to this research, being in the provinces other than the Western Province and the non-urban sector caused a positive impact on elderly men's employment. Similarly, it also revealed that age, marital status, being uneducated or only possessing primary education caused a positive impact on elderly women's employment. Having children, household size has been non-Sinhala have negative impact on elderly labour supply. Finally, policy recommendations have been made to address the issues of the elderly labour supply in the two aspects of social welfare and institutional reforms of the labour market.

The highest rate of Secondary job holding (moonlighting) was recorded among two groups in Sri Lanka, including professionals and agricultural workers, although their objectives of moonlighting are different. Sri Lanka has been keeping a record of the lowest productivity in the agricultural sector for years with a higher rate of underemployment and hidden unemployment. Moonlighting is a way to enhance maximum utilization of labour in the sector and the main objective of this research is to identify the factors that affect the engagement in secondary jobs, among agricultural workers in Sri Lanka. This was further analyzed among the farmers for three specific crops, including paddy, vegetable and tea. A total of 8,165 agricultural workers from the Sri Lanka Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2018, were used for this study. The Logit regression models were used to identify the factors to engage in secondary jobs for agricultural workers in Sri Lanka. The study concluded that the income and number of hours of the main jobs, being a female, being unmarried, not being a Sinhalese, living in non-Western provinces, size of the household, and engaging in agricultural activities during the second and third quarters have significant relationships on the choice of holding secondary jobs among agricultural workers. Engagement in secondary jobs increases with age at a decreasing rate. The study proposes policies for the promotion of moonlighting to utilize the full capacity of Sri Lanka's agricultural workers.

Non-communicable diseases shorten the life expectancy and pave the way for an increase in the mortality and state of disabilities in humans while it has become a global challenge, with the present epidemic transition. Most of the lower and middle-income countries, including Sri Lanka, are currently giving priority to this issue in their respective health policies. The main objective of this research was to study socio-economic factors that affect the prevalence of non-communicable diseases in general, with a special focus on two selected diseases. Micro-level secondary data from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey of Sri Lanka 2016 was used for this study. The Logit regression models were used for data analysis with the dependent variables for the prevalence of non-communicable diseases, having diabetes, and blood pressure. The study has found that factors of age, being female, and being Indian Tamil persons, positively affected the occurrence of non-communicable diseases; while factors like living in the rural and estate sector, age square, being clerical workers, elementary workers, and agriculture workers affected it negatively. Professionspecific policies are further suggested to minimise the negative implications of non-communicable diseases in Sri Lanka.