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Researchers examined the impact of access to banking services for the first time on households in rural Kenya. While savings account and credit usage rates were low overall because of poor service quality and low levels of trust in the institutions, access to the accounts helped some households rely...

In Ghana, researchers worked with a bank that provides services to low-income customers with limited access to mainstream banking to evaluate the impact of sending pre-recorded informational voice calls and text messages on the adoption of mobile banking. Clients that received messages encouraging...

Supporting women’s empowerment, the ability for women to control their resources and make their own choices, is a common policy goal both as its own outcome and as a vehicle to drive other change like improving children’s health and education. Many empowerment programs have targeted women’s income...

To study the employment limitation of microenterprises, researchers offered microentrepreneurs capital to incentivize them to hire workers. Results showed that a wage subsidy did not lead to lasting increases in employment sales or profits.

Researchers are evaluating the impact of a digital school fee loan, with and without a direct repayment incentive, on repayment rates, households’ well-being, and students’ educational outcomes.