FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES AMONG UNBANKED HISPANICS IN NEW YORK CITY AND

(Under the Direction of Joan Koonce Moss) This research explores in detail unbanked Hispanic consumers, using the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s Survey of Financial Activities and Attitudes dataset. Logistic regression was employed in an attempt to understand the differences between Hispanic and non-Hispanic consumers ’ behavior in the financial services marketplace. This study examined whether Hispanics were more or less likely to be unbanked or to use alternative financial services, both before and after controlling for other variables that could proxy for demographic characteristics, economic characteristics, language-related characteristics, and geographic characteristics. The findings indicated that Hispanics are indeed more likely to be unbanked than their non-Hispanic counterparts. After adjusting for other factors, Hispanics were less likely to be unbanked, suggesting that certain characteristics of the population may play a greater role in being unbanked than being Hispanic. However, the findings did not support the direction of the hypothesis when examining the use of AFS