HOUSEHOLD DEMAND FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES: REGIONAL ASPECT

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the features of the regional distribution of households demand for financial services and identification of factors and characteristics of such distribution. The authors undertook to fulfill this aim by dividing all regions in Ukraine into regions with household-donors and household-recipients. First of them are characterized by the predominance of household demand for financial services, which provide an increase in their financial costs. In Ukraine, 2/3 of the regions belong to the group of donor households. The rest belong to the group of regions with recipient households. In these regions, the demand for financial services, which causes an increase in financial resources of households, prevails. The analysis is based on data from the State Statistics Service of Ukraine and encompasses the period of 2017-2018. The k-means method was used to cluster the regions. The cluster, which brings together regions with a low overall description of households demand for financial services, is the largest. This place includes 14 (58.33%) of regions. The smallest is the cluster, which brings together regions with high household demand for financial services. It includes only 1 (4.17%) region of Ukraine. Based on this, the authors concluded that household demand for financial services was generally low. The authors tested the hypothesis about the type of distribution. It is proved that the demand of households for financial services in the regional context is distributed according to Poisson's law. According it high and very high demand per household is typical for only 8% of regions. The annual volume of financial services in the amount of UAH 245.88 is considered sufficient for most households in Ukraine, regardless of the region. The authors calculated the correlation coefficients between the volume of financial services used by households and the level of their income. Correlation coefficients were also calculated between the volume of household demand for financial services in a particular region and the value of gross regional product. Based on these calculations, the authors concluded that the volume of household demand for financial services does not depend on the level of household income or the level of gross regional product. This indicates the presence of certain non-economic factors that determine the distribution of regions according to the level of household demand for financial services. This indicates the presence of certain non-economic factors that determine the distribution of regions according to the level of household demand for financial services.