Financial Inclusion, Poverty, and Income Inequality: Evidence from High, Middle, and Low-income Countries

Abstract

The past two decades have witnessed a high national importance to financial inclusion around the world. This paper intends to explore the impact of financial inclusion on poverty reduction and income inequality in the world, high, middle, and low-income countries. For this purpose, a new composite financial inclusion was constructed with three dimensions for finding various macroeconomic variables affecting the level of financial inclusion for 122 economies, including 32 from high-income, 38 from upper middle income, 38 from lower middle income, and 14 from low-income countries. Then the impact of financial inclusion, on poverty and income inequality, for the world and then for high, middle, and low-income countries was investigated. The estimates reveal that rule of law significantly affects financial inclusion for the world, high, middle, and low-income countries. But age dependency ratio influences the financial inclusion only for our full sample. However, population density significantly decreases financial inclusion just in the full sample and Upper middle-income countries. Education completion impacts significantly financial inclusion just in upper middle income. While literacy has a higher impact on financial inclusion in high-income countries. The findings also indicate that financial inclusion is significantly correlated with lower poverty for the full sample. The link between financial inclusion and income inequality has been found for high-income countries and lower-middle-income countries.