Financial Inclusion, Gender Dimension, and Economic Impact on Poor Households

SummaryWe examine the question: “In the context of gender dimension what is the evidence of the impact of the financial inclusion programs on poor households represented by women relative to that represented by men?” By constructing a good counterfactual and comparison group, we employ the difference-in-difference estimator approach with Panel Least Squares and Generalized Methods of Moments using standard errors for a robust analysis. We notice that income growth (CAGR) net of inflation effect was 8.40% for women as against 3.97% for men, indicating that the gender of participating poor undoubtedly affects the outcomes of these programs.