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Access to savings and household welfare evidence from a household survey in The Gambia
Author(s) -
Jawara Hamidou
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
african development review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.654
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1467-8268
pISSN - 1017-6772
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8268.12423
Subject(s) - welfare , economics , asset (computer security) , health spending , household income , demographic economics , labour economics , public economics , health care , economic growth , health insurance , geography , computer security , archaeology , computer science , market economy
In this study, we provide evidence on the impact of access to formal savings on household well‐being in The Gambia. Specifically, we study how access to formal savings can impact household outcomes such as total spending, ownership of durable assets, health spending, and education spending. Using a representative household survey and kernel ridge regression method, we find that household access to formal savings has a positive and statistically significant impact on all outcomes except health spending. Furthermore, we find that the largest effect size of access to savings is on education spending. However, the impact estimates on education and food expenditure are not very robust to a mild presence of hidden bias. Overall, we find a robust impact for total spending and asset ownership. Hence, increasing household access to formal savings can improve household well‐being in The Gambia.