A Cross-Country Analysis of Unbanked Within the OECD

Financial inclusion has been extensively researched on a nation-by-nation basis. The recently released Global Findex data set from the World Bank allows for this literature to be extended because it creates universal measures of relevant data. Because data are universal, it allows multiple nations to be analyzed simultaneously. Using a set of thirty-one countries from the OECD, we find that social factors are an important part of highly banked populations. Higher levels of trust in government and formal financial institutions increase the level of financial inclusion. Increases in income inequality are predicted to decrease the banked population within a nation. Our results suggest that in OECD nations the consideration of non-financial factors yields important insight into the determinants of financial inclusion