Essays on financial inclusion through cash transfers and savings accounts
The overall aim of this thesis is to extend the literature on two types of financial inclusion initiatives – cash transfers and microsavings – used for improving welfare of the poor. While cash transfers and microsavings have become prominent tools in global poverty reduction efforts and their short-term impacts are increasingly studied, important questions remain about long-term impacts and important factors that enhance or limit their effectiveness.
The first part of this thesis focuses on cash transfers, presenting empirical evidence from Uganda for behavioral effects of income-based targeting on productive investments and the potential of establishing additional community-managed funds and local institutional structures for enhancing program effectiveness. The second part of this thesis examines microsavings. It documents both the importance of decision-making power over formal savings for account use among married female account holders, and the potential of a comprehensive set of interventions—addressing religious, financial, and literacy barriers—to improve long-term account ownership, use, and total savings. Although many of the accounts opened under a comprehensive incentive package are still active and total savings rose substantially, they did not yield transformative effects on key downstream outcomes, such as consumption or perceived financial control.