FINANCIAL INCLUSION AND QUALITY OF LIFE IN NIGERIA

ABSTRACT

Studies on financial inclusion have been of great interest to policy makers in the developing world because of the effect of financial inclusion in the economic growth and development process globally. A study on the link between financial inclusion and quality of life is scarce in the literature in developing countries, thus this study becomes imperative. It is against these back ground that this study investigated the link between financial inclusion and quality of life in Nigeria from 1981 to 2022. The study adopted the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL) to analyze the time series. The findings of the short-run ARDL result indicated that number of commercial bank branches (NCBBR) has a positive and insignificant effect on quality of life, bank loans to rural areas (BLRA) has  a negative  and insignificant effect on quality of life, present value of SMEO has a positive and significant effect on quality of life, previous value of SMEO has a negative and significant effect on quality of life, secondary school enrollment rate (SSER) has a positive and significant effect on quality of life, present value of per capita income has a negative and insignificant effect on quality of life, previous value of per capita income has a positive and significant effect on quality of life,  and inflation rate has a negative and insignificant effect on quality of life. Based on the findings, the study recommended that the government should put more efforts in providing financial products and services so as assists in improving the quality of life by providing more economic opportunities to the populace to improve their livelihoods so that they can have access to the basic needs of life such as quality education, good health and nutrition, government loans and grants that will improve their welfare and standard of living. Furthermore, the government should continue to provide financial incentive to the small scale businesses so as to increase the productive capacity of the entrepreneurs which help increase their outputs, investments and income which will assist in improving the quality of the populace and which can go a long way in lifting many people out of the poverty line by helping them to have access to the basic needs of life such as education, good health and increase in their income.