SOAS Research Online

A Free Database of the Latest Research by SOAS Academics and PhD Students

[skip to content]

Ajefu, Joseph, Demir, Ayse and Haghpanahan, Houra (2020) 'The impact of financial inclusion on mental health.' SSM - Population Health, 11.

[img]
Preview
Text - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Download (439kB) | Preview

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of financial inclusion on the mental health of heads of household in Nigeria. The study employed data from the 2015/2016 Nigerian General Household Survey (GHS), matched with georeferenced data concerning financial services obtained from the Insight2Impact (i2i) GIS interface. The results indicate that financial inclusion has a strong positive impact on mental health. The study used a robust instrumental variable method, in which a household's distance from the nearest financial institution was used as the instrument for financial inclusion. In addition, it identified the potential channels through which financial inclusion can influence mental health, including: (1) food expenditure; (2) remittances; and (3) risk-coping mechanisms. The findings of this study reinforce growing evidence for the benefits of financial inclusion for alleviating depression symptoms.

Item Type: Journal Article
Keywords: Financial inclusion, Mental health, Nigeria
SOAS Departments & Centres: Departments and Subunits > School of Finance & Management
ISSN: 23528273
Copyright Statement: © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2020.100630
Date Deposited: 13 Jan 2021 08:36
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/34647
Funders: Economic and Social Research Council

Altmetric Data

Statistics

Download activity - last 12 monthsShow export options
Downloads since deposit
6 month trend
70Downloads
6 month trend
94Hits
Accesses by country - last 12 monthsShow export options
Accesses by referrer - last 12 monthsShow export options

Repository staff only

Edit Item Edit Item