PSC Brownbag Series: Digital Financial Services and Women’s Empowerment: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania

The PSC Brown Bag Seminar runs live and on Zoom from noon to 1.

Speaker: Emma Riley, University of Michigan

Seminar Date: 4/22/24

Digital Financial Services and Women’s Empowerment: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania

Can increasing women’s use of digital financial services improve their empowerment? We test this using a randomized control trial with 152 female microfinance groups in Tanzania where treated groups were randomly switched to repay their loan using mobile money instead of the usual method of cash. We find that this exogenous shift in the way that women use mobile money for loan repayment increases their use of mobile money for other transactions. Women’s control over their finances increases, they have higher levels of empowerment in the household and expenditures shift towards goods aligned with their preferences. We see small positive effects of the shift to mobile money repayment on loan repayment behavior and social cohesion within the microfinance group. These findings highlight the benefits that encouraging greater use of digital technologies can bring to women.
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