An Empirical Investigation of Financial Inclusion in Pakistan
Abstract
Pakistan is one of the developing countries that has low financial inclusion. This paper examines the determinants of financial inclusion in Pakistan with two dimensions bank account and mobile money account. The data used in the analyses came from 6000 individual adults across Pakistan from Financial Inclusion Insight 2017 and included people of different ages, occupations, geographical locations, and genders. Using the multivariate logistic model, the determinants of financial inclusion were estimated. The results show that the age of individuals, employment, education, financial literacy, marriage, owning a smartphone, gender, getting money from the government and getting money from agriculture and livestock are the significant determinants for both bank accounts and mobile money accounts in Pakistan. If an individual is a man, financially literate, older, married, more educated, owning a smartphone, employed, getting money from the government and getting money from agriculture and livestock ha as a higher chances of being financially included as compared to an individual is a woman, less educated, younger, single and rural poor. The implication of this policy is that there is a need for the governments of Pakistan to formulate a holistic financial framework that seeks to mitigate the negative factors of financial inclusion and sustain the positive ones. It is recommended that such a policy framework should be politically neutral, economically viable, gender-sensitive, socially stable and financially feasible so as to make it sustainable.
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