Foreword The Little Data Book on Financial Inclusion 2012 is a pocket edition of the Global Financial Inclusion Database published in 2012 in Measuring Financial Inclusion: The Global Findex Database by Asli Demirguc-Kunt and Leora Klapper. It provides country-level indicators of financial inclusion summarized for all adults and disaggregated by key demographic characteristics—gender, age, education, income, and rural or urban residence. The book also includes summary pages by region and by income group aggregates. Covering 148 economies, the indicators of financial inclusion measure the use of formal bank accounts, payments behavior, savings patterns, credit patterns, and insurance decisions. Access to financial services plays a critical part in development by facilitating economic growth and reducing income inequality. Inclusive financial systems allow poor people to smooth their consumption and insure themselves against economic vulnerabilities, from illness and accidents to theft and unemployment. Financial access enables poor people to save and to borrow—allowing them to build their assets, to invest in education and entrepreneurial ventures, and thus to improve their livelihoods. Inclusive finance is especially likely to benefit disadvantaged groups such as women, youth, and rural communities. For all these reasons financial inclusion has gained prominence in recent years as a policy objective to improve the lives of the poor. Recognizing the need for better data to support the financial inclusion agenda, the World Bank’s Development Research Group, with a 10-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, launched the Global Findex database, collecting the first round of data in 2011. The Global Findex database is the first public database of demand-side indicators that consistently measure people’s use of financial products around the world and over time. Covering a range of topics, the data can be used to track financial inclusion policies globally and develop a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how people around the world save, borrow, and make payments. The data were collected by Gallup, Inc. over the 2011 calendar year through the Gallup World Poll survey. The data show sharp disparities in the use of financial services between high-income and developing economies and across demographic groups. While about half of all adults around the world have an account with a formal financial institution, the share in high-income economies (89 percent) is more than twice that in developing economies (41 percent). Globally, more than 2.5 billion adults have no formal account, most of them in developing economies. The gaps in account use between demographic groups are particularly large in developing economies: While 46 percent of men have an account, only 37 percent of women do. And those in the highest income quintile are on average more than twice as likely to have a formal account as those in the lowest quintile. The Little Data Book on Financial Inclusion 2012 is a part of the Global Findex suite of products offering access to the data. Others include the Open
The Little Data Book on Financial Inclusion
2012
v