Anmerkungen:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments March 21, 2022 erstellt
Beschreibung:
This study analyzes the impact of the proliferation of Financial Technology (FinTech) on the achievability of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with respect to extreme poverty by 2030. Using Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) on annual data for 127 emerging and developing economies including the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the period from 2004 – 2018, the study uses three different measures characterize the likelihood of FinTech adoption: the number of mobile cellular subscriptions, the number of fixed broadband subscriptions, and the percentage of the population who use the internet. The study also employs a gap analysis against two poverty targets — United Nations’ 0% and World Bank’s 3%. The results of the study indicate that FinTech has a statistically significant impact on poverty alleviation, however, none of MENA and the SSA countries will be able to achieve the UN’s 0% poverty target by 2030 if they depend exclusively on the improvement of FinTech services. Additionally, improvements in FinTech along will bring extreme poverty below 3% in all MENA countries, with the exception of Yemen, Djibouti, and Egypt, but only three in the SSA region including Cabo Verde, Seychelles, and Mauritius. The paper concludes that poverty alleviation goes beyond digital dividends and identifies human capital accumulation and improvement in governance as prerequisites for realizing the potential of FinTech and its contribution to the efforts of eradicating extreme poverty within a policy framework to achieve the SDGs in both the MENA and SSA regions