Financial inclusion and women’s economic empowerment: Evidence from Ethiopia

Figures & data

Figure 1. Conceptual framework.

Table 1. DHS items for constructing the empowerment index

Decision-making questions	Relevant answers
Person who usually decides on respondent’s health care	Only Wife, jointly, only husband
Person who usually decides on large household purchases	Wife only, jointly, husband only
Who usually decides on visits to family or relatives	Wife only, jointly, husband only
person who usually decides what to do with money husband earns	Wife only, jointly, husband only
Questions on wife beating
Beating justified if wife goes out without telling husband	0= No;1 = Yes
Beating justified if wife neglects the children	0= No;1 = Yes
Beating justified if wife argues with husband	0= No;1 = Yes
Beating justified if wife refuses to have sex with husband	0= No;1 = Yes
Beating justified if wife burns the food	0= No;1 = Yes

Note: The items in this Table are extracted from the 2016 Demographic Household Survey (DHS).

Table 2. Summary statistics

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)
VARIABLES	N	Mean	SD	Min	Max
Respondent’s Current Age	15,683	27.94	9.159	15	49
Education in Single Years	15,683	4.083	4.734	0	22
Family Size	15,683	5.455	2.460	1	20
Age of Household Head	15,679	42.60	14.14	15	95
Frequency of Reading Newspaper or Magazine	15,683	0.209	0.504	0	2
Frequency of Listening to Radio	15,683	0.513	0.771	0	2
Frequency of Watching Television	15,683	0.601	0.853	0	2
Use mobile Telephone for Financial Transactions	5,842	0.0484	0.215	0	1
Has an Account in a Bank or Other Financial Institution	15,683	0.188	0.391	0	1
Wealth Index Combined	15,683	3.230	1.629	1	5
Years since First Cohabitation	11,405	13.30	8.910	0	39
Husband/Partner’s Total number of Years of Education	9,711	4.38	5.177	0	22
Husband/Partner’s Age	9,824	38.71	11.35	15	95
Respondent Worked in Last 12 months	15,683	0.861	0.944	0	3
Owns a Mobile Phone	15,683	0.373	0.483	0	1
Owns Land	15,683	0.340	0.474	0	1
Owns House	15,683	0.457	0.498	0	1
Household Head is Male	15,683	0.692	0.462	0	1
Rural Resident	15,683	0.659	0.474	0	1
WEE Index 1	9,447	8.46e-09	0.933	−2.005	1.023
WEE Index 2	9,447	8.56e-10	0.889	−2.490	1.171

Table 3. Results of copula switching regression

Variables	Selection Equation	Regime 0	Regime 1
Dependent Variable	Financial inclusion (FI)	WEE for FI = 0	WEE for FI = 1
Rural Resident Dummy	−.3027212***
Owns a Mobile Phone	.4124717***	.0623037*	.11848**
Owns House	.068374	−.0943149***	−.098534**
Owns Land	.0201106	−.0354213	−.0732338
Respondent Worked in Last 12 months	.1727606***	−.0212234*	.0138115
Education in Single Years	.0678823***	.0100254**	.0306464***
Family Size	−.0100862	−.0136482***	.0060619
Frequency of Reading Newspaper or Magazine	.1145209***	−.0164122	.0196478
Frequency of Listening to Radio	.0891612***	−.0092362	−.006084
Frequency of Watching Television	.148585***	−.0383329*	.0709533***
Respondent’s Current Age	.0356813***	.0022745	.0112262**
Husband/partner’s Total Number of Years of Education	.001259	.0008077	.002466*
Husband/Partner’s Age	−.00236	−.0019011	−.0020815
Years Since First Cohabitation	−.0048796	−9.27e-06	−.0008526
Wealth Index Combined	.1860194***	.0440694***	.0671437***
Age of Household Head	−.0006889	−.0000253	−.0038364**
Household Head is Male	−.1175248**	−.0007484	.0107105
Intercept	−3.135229***	−.1704402**	−.3323733
atheta0	.8306937***
atheta1	−.0549994

LR test of independence : Test statistic of 71.622 with p-value 0.0000.

Note: ***, **,* indicate statistical significance at 1%,5 and 10 % level of significance.

Table 4. Average treatment effect estimates after copula switching regression

Woman Status	Estimates
	Actual	Counterfactual	ATT
Financially Included	0.160	0.083	0.077***
	Actual	Counterfactual	ATU
Financially non-included	−0.369	1.05	− 1.419***

Note: The dependent variable is women empowerment index. *** indicates statistical significance at a 1% level of significance; ATT denotes Average treatment effect on the treated; and ATU denotes Average treatment effect on the untreated.

Table 5. Results from using place of residence as instrumental variable (IV)

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
	Dependent Variable
	WEE Index	WEE Index	WEE Index	FI
Financial inclusion (FI)	1.748*** (0.092)	3.042*** (0.773)	2.179*** (0.765)
Rural resident dummy				−0.080*** (0.017)
First Stage F statistic	466.51	23.98	21.70
Observations	9,447	9,447	9,447	9,824
Controls	NO	YES	YES	YES
Region Fixed Effects	NO	NO	YES	YES

Notes: The standard errors in parentheses are clustered at the DHS cluster level. *** p<0.01. Region Fixed Effects refer to the inclusion of all administrative regions of Ethiopia.

Table 6. Nevo and Rosen (2012)‘s imperfectIV bounds

	Lower Bound (CI)	LB(Estimator)	UB(Estimator)	Upper Bound (CI)
Financial inclusion (FI)	[0.679	(2.179	0.162)	.245]

Nevo, A., & Rosen, A. M. (2012). Identification with imperfect instruments. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 94(3), 659–671. https://doi.org/10.1162/REST_a_00171

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Data availability statement

The data used in this study is the publicly available 2016 Demographic Household Survey (DHS) for Ethiopia.