Accelerating the impact of financial literacy training programmes on household consumption by empowering women

ABSTRACT

This study examines the impact of a joint financial literacy and women’s empowerment training programme on household consumption as a welfare indicator. Using data collected from a randomized controlled trial implemented in Ghana, we tested for baseline balance and applied ordinary least squares to estimate endline impact. Our findings revealed that the impact of financial literacy on household consumption is influenced by the design and delivery of the programme. A weaker impact is achieved when financial literacy training is offered alone. The ensuing stronger short-term impact of financial literacy training on household consumption is achieved through the inclusion of a women’s empowerment module. The joint delivery of the programme significantly improved household consumption for female-beneficiary and younger households. We advocate the inclusion of women’s empowerment training in financial literacy training programmes to accelerate its impact on household welfare through increased household consumption

KEYWORDS:

• Financial literacy
• Consumption
• Women’s empowerment
• poverty
• Ghana

JEL Codes:

• C13
• C93
• D11
• D12
• I22

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Rural and Agricultural Finance Programme (RAFiP) for providing funds for the project that yielded the data for this study. Thanks to Professor Samuel K. Annim and the Directorate of Research, Innovation and Consultancy (DRIC) at the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Ghana for granting us permission to use the data. We also appreciate the support provided by Dr. James Atta Peprah (the principal supervisor of the project). Finally, we would like to thank every team member that contributed to the success of the project. We would also like to acknowledge the University of New England, Armidale, NSW and the Australian Government for the International Postgraduate Research Award (IPRA) that provided funds for my study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Here and elsewhere in this paper, the significance or insignificance of a variable is made in reference to the coefficients, but the variable name is used for ease of expression.