Does financial literacy inevitably lead to access to finance services? Evidence from rural Ghana

ABSTRACT: This study examined the determinants of financial literacy (FL) and its impact on access to financial services (AFS), using data collected from rural Ghana. A two-stage residual inclusion model is utilized to address the selection bias issue. The results showed that FL is affected by household heads’ age, gender, education, asset ownership, homeownership, and economics education. The results revealed that FL is significant and positively related to AFS, but its square shows an inverse relation with saving mobilization. This indicated a non-linear relationship between FL and AFS. Moreover, we find that FL has a larger AFS impact for households with high-income and male household heads relative to their counterparts. The study recommended that the government can initiate the creation of a rural committee to educate rural residents on financial issues through radio broadcasting and meetings. Our findings highlighted the importance of FL on AFS in enhancing the welfare of rural households.

Asian Retailers in Glasgow: A Glimpse of Commercial and Property Relations in the Early Eighties

As noted in the paper published in the last issue of this journal, shopkeeping and retail have been one of the important ways of entry into the host economy in the case of some prewar migrating communities such as the Jews and the Italians and the post-war migrants such as the Asians (mostly Panjabis from India and Pakistan) to Glasgow in Scotland. We explore how the two major sets of theories the ethnic customer niche and middlemen minority theory apply to this group and explore the unchartered area of the nature of ‘property relations’ of retailers, i.e.in terms of the acquired commercial and housing property. Specifically, we explore the similarities and differences between the commercial and residential markets and their relationship and possible interdependence for entrepreneurial and asset building and the phenomenon of segregated property markets. We begin by exploring the background of retailers and their possible influence on entry into the business. We also compare some key aspects of Glasgow’s retail economy with other Asian retail localized economies using the studies of the period for comparative perspective purposes. The paper adds to the very sparse literature on asset ownership or on ethnic commercial property markets and explores if the high ownership of housing and the presence of ethnic origin national banks helped with both ethnic enterprise and asset creation. It also explores the extent to which the ‘ethnic niche’ model and the ‘middle minorities’ model applies to the Asians in Glasgow in addition to the hypothesis if the agricultural background which requires some sense of business and related skills, and the notion of success and the status of property may be the crucial cultural and experiential drivers of asset acquisition and enterprise.

Agricultural Commercialisation in South-Western Ghana

The Agricultural Policy Research in Africa study in Ghana consists of three work streams. This report contains results of the analyses of Work Stream 1 (WS1) baseline and endline survey datasets for Ghana. Oil palm commercialisation arrangements and outcomes are the focus of WS1 in Ghana. Case studies have been carried out in two districts – Ahanta West and Mpohor – in Western Region. This report highlights the changes between 2017 and 2019 for five APRA indicators, including agricultural commercialisation (input and output), employment, poverty (income, subjective poverty and household asset ownership), food security and women empowerment.

Factors Associated with Land Ownership by Women in Uganda: A Cross-Sectional Study

Aims: There is growing evidence concerning the significance of asset ownership by women. However, in Sub-Saharan Africa, asset ownership is lower for women compared to men. This study investigated factors associated with land ownership by women in Uganda. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: The Uganda Demographic and Health Survey 2016 data was collected by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics from 20 June to 16 December 2016. Methodology: The logistic regression model was fitted to determine factors significantly associated with land ownership. Results: The likelihood of a woman owning land increased with an increase in her age and reduced with improvement in her household's wealth index. Furthermore, the likelihood of owning land was lowest for women; aged 18-19 years, residing in the Central region, residing in urban areas, of single status, with no account in a bank or other financial institution, in the richest wealth index category, and those currently not working. Conclusion: There is a need to develop more effective strategies to empower women regarding land ownership and control. There is a need to sensitize women about their rights to land ownership, about saving with registered financial institutions which increases their likelihood of accessing alternative funding sources to support their purchase of land and other valuable assets.

Assets and Domestic Units

Tracking change in assets access and ownership in longitudinal research is difficult. Assets are rarely assigned to individuals. Their benefit and management are spread across domestic units which morph over time. And this dynamism means that any claim about changing prosperity must also include other important claims about how prosperity should be measured and the stability of the social units which experience that prosperity. The chapter reviews the challenges of using assets to understand poverty dynamics, and tracking the domestic units that own and manage assets. It argues that changing asset ownership can be tracked, but who owns them and how their benefits are distributed—and how those distributions change—remains key.

Household Language Barriers, Community Language Resources, and Asset Ownership Among Immigrants and Refugees in Western New York: A Mixed-Methods Study

While English proficiency is recognized as a main determinant of immigrants’ and refugees’ economic success, the role of community language resources is rarely examined. This mixed-methods study investigates how community language resources, defined as the percentage of adults fluent in English among those speaking the same language, affect asset ownership among immigrants and refugees. Using American Community Survey data, quantitative analyses suggest community language resources facilitate homeownership among immigrant households with a language barrier. Neither the household- nor community-level language variable is significantly associated with vehicle or income-generating asset ownership. Qualitative interviews reveal language-related challenges to buying a house and roles of community resources. Findings call for policies and programs that mobilize community resources for those with limited English proficiency.

Non-fungible tokens and the future of art

A new blockchain-based technology is changing how the art world works, and changing how we think about asset ownership in the process.

Can Assets Determine Family Happiness?

Ownership of assets can be assessed as the success of individual achievement in his life goals. It certainly can make individuals feel satisfied with the efforts they have made. Life satisfaction is one of the dimensions used by BPS to measure happiness. Thus, this study will analyze the effect of asset ownership on happiness. The data used in this study are data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS) wave 5 of 2014. Analysis of the model in this study uses logistic regression for analysis in Java and outside Java Island. This study found that ownership of assets (jewelry, savings, vehicles, receivables), health, gender of the head of the household, type of residential, mobile phone, television, and access to the internet have a significant effect on household happiness. At the same time, other assets (houses/other buildings, land), number of household members, type of floor, and residential area (urban, rural) have no effect in determining of happiness of the household. The finding in this study also states that the probability of household happiness will be higher outside Java Island.

The Political Economy of Housing in Ireland

This chapter examines the political economy of housing in Ireland since the turn of the nineteenth century. It identifies three phases. The early and mid-twentieth century saw enormous state intervention, with the Irish welfare state becoming property based and home ownership being socialized. The closing years of the twentieth century saw state intervention diminish, and the consequent shaping of housing dynamics by financial markets. This drove a house price and building boom, before bust in the mid-2000s. The years since the financial crisis have seen an intensification of neoliberalization and financialization, through the ever greater marketization of housing and the development of links between global capital and urban development, asset ownership, and housing. This analysis shows the central role that housing has played in the Irish political economy. It also demonstrates significant long-term continuity in housing policy, and the importance of taking into account national institutional, political, and cultural contexts.

Twice Is Nice: The Benefits of Two Ground Measures for Evaluating the Accuracy of Satellite-Based Sustainability Estimates

Satellite data offer great promise for improving measures related to sustainable development goals. However, assessing satellite estimates is complicated by the fact that traditional ground-based measures of these same outcomes are often very noisy, leading to underestimation of satellite performance. Here, we quantify the amount of noise in traditional measures for three commonly studied outcomes in prior work—agricultural yields, household asset ownership, and household consumption expenditures—and present a theoretical basis for properly characterizing satellite performance in the presence of noisy ground data. We find that for both yield and consumption, repeated ground measures often disagree with each other, with less than half of the variability in one ground measure captured by the other. Estimates of the performance of satellite measures, in terms of squared correlation (r2), which account for this noise in ground data are accordingly higher, and occasionally even double, the apparent performance based on a naïve comparison of satellite and ground measures. Our results caution against evaluating satellite measures without accounting for noise in ground data and emphasize the benefit of estimating that noise by collecting at least two independent ground measures.