Research Guides: Microfinance: Poverty and Financial Inclusion

Why Financial Inclusion?

What is Financial Inclusion?

Financial inclusion means that individuals and businesses have access to useful and affordable financial products and services that meet their needs – transactions, payments, savings, credit and insurance – delivered in a responsible and sustainable way. (World Bank)

Financial Inclusion
The Global Financial Development Report 2014 from the World Bank introduces the latest research about financial inclusion, what drives it, and what policies affect it.

Who are the Unbanked?

Global Findex
The Global Financial Inclusion Database measures how people in 148 countries save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk. The world’s most comprehensive database on financial inclusion that consistently measures people’s use of financial services across countries and over time. A project of the World Bank.
The Little Data Book on Financial Inclusion
Annual summary data from the Global Findex database.

Books on the Problem of Poverty

Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live on $2 a Day by Daryl Collins et al. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
Call Number: ebook and print book (HC79 .P6 P67 2009, 4th floor).
Poverty capital : microfinance and the making of development by Roy, Ananya. New York : Routledge, 2010.
Call Number: ebook and print book ( HG178.3 .R69 2010, 4th floor)
How powerful institutions control "capital" and manage poverty.

Research Organizations

Center for Financial Inclusion
CFI is a think tank that conducts research on financial inclusion and microfinance.
World Bank - Financial Inclusion
Reports from the World Bank.
FinDev Gateway - CGAP
CGAP's mission: Advancing financial inclusion to improve the lives of the poor. find papers, case studies and tool kits.
Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion
GPFI collects data and promotes policy for financial inclusion in all G20 countries and others.
Asian Development Bank - Financial Inclusion and Microfinance
Studies and videos from the ADB.
UNCDF Inclusive Finance
The UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) promotes innovative approaches to building financial sectors that serve the poor.