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Abstract

Recent research has found that financial development reduces poverty in developing countries. This paper shows that it also improves education, gender equality, and health. Specifically it has 3 key findings. First, financial development helps achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for education, gender equality, and health by increasing the amount of private credit, money, and deposits in the economy. Second, increasing opportunities to deposit savings is the most significant way that financial development affects the MDGs. Third, the least financially developed countries benefit the most from financial development. These results are robust to omitted variable and reverse causation biases.

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