Financial Access and Household Welfare: Evidence from Mauritania

Abstract

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

The Welfare Effects of Formal and Informal Financial Access in the Gambia: A Comparative Assessment

“…In order to get a comprehensive understanding of household welfare, the study adopted as dependent variables both income and consumption patterns following after various previous studies, including Amendola et al (2016) for Mauritania. This approach is better placed to understand the phenomenon, compared to studies that only include one element of these, such as Quach (2016) for Vietnam.…”

“…This approach is better placed to understand the phenomenon, compared to studies that only include one element of these, such as Quach (2016) for Vietnam. In this case, it is important to adopt both welfare measurements because income shocks may not directly translate into decreased consumption or welfare due to household resilience (Amendola et al, 2016). With inclusion of the role of resilience by measuring consumption, therefore, the study included various welfare indicators (all available in the IHS3 data) including food consumption, non-food consumption, education expenditure, household income, and a subjective assessment of poverty.…”

“…Ideally, the best approach to this task is use of randomized control trials (RCTs) as was done by Breza and Kinnan (2021), Fink et al (2020), Meager (2019), Banerjee et al (2015), Angelucci et al (2015), and Augsburg et al (2015) among others. Though, due to time and monetary costs, a number of studies still adopt non-experimental methods such as two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression and propensity score matching (PSM) techniques, as was done by Danquah et al (2020), Addury (2018), Bocher et al (2017), Mwansakilwa et al (2017), Amendola et al (2016), Quach (2016), Kaboski and Townsend (2011), and Diagne (1998), to mention a few. Some of these studies start by identifying the determinants of finance access—such as land holding, household size, savings, and sex of household head—before unearthing the impacts of credit access on the different welfare measures.…”

Does Usage of Islamic Microfinance Products Influence the Income, Education, and Health in Mauritania?

“…Poverty in Mauritania is increasing enormously. Around 32 percent of the population live under poverty, and 16 percent are in severe poverty (Amendola, Boccia, Mele, & Sensini, 2016). Besides that, financial inclusion in Mauritania is very low, and the people who have a formal account are only around 20 percent of the population (World Bank, 2015).…”

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“…Also, Islamic microfinance is not strong enough to resist in front of challenges related to repayments. For instance, in Sub-Saharan African countries a quite large number of microfinance institutions have been failed and closed (Amendola, Boccia, Mele, and Sensini, 2016). Thus, the main aim of this paper is to explore the issues facing Islamic microfinance in preserving their durability.…”