Microfinance clients' awareness index: A measure of awareness and skills of microfinance clients

The promotion of financial education for poor people in developing countries calls for work on several fronts, one of which is to develop a measure to evaluate the outcome of financial education in relation to broader development goals. This paper proposes a Microfinance Clients' Awareness Index (MCAI) to determine the level of financial awareness of microfinance clients. This index is a comprehensive measure that incorporates information on several aspects of financial awareness in one single number lying between 1 and 2, where 1 denotes complete ignorance and 2 indicates complete financial awareness of the microfinance product.