FINANCIAL INCLUSION AND INCOME INEQUALITY IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Studies show that the low level of economic development in countries occasioned by high income inequality levels may be addressed by financial inclusion policies via providing increased access and availability of formal financial services to the financially excluded segment of the economy. This paper investigates the extent to which this is applicable in Nigeria using the Auto regressive distributed lag estimation technique on time series data for the period 1985 to 2019. The results, consistent with the special agent theory of financial inclusion, show that financial inclusion significantly reduce the income inequality gap in Nigeria. Furthermore, the results also suggest that education and economic growth lowers the gap while population widens the gap. Based on this, the study recommends that policy makers in Nigeria put in more efforts to achieve the set target rate of financial inclusion as well put in place population reducing polices to further reduce the gap while promoting policies that will actualise the potentials of the other indices.