Gender and Geographical Disparities in Financial Inclusion in Rural sub-Saharan Africa: A Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition

Financial inclusion is considered a key driver of poverty reduction, economic development, and the achievement of several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although researchers have examined gender and geographical financial inclusion, most studies have relied on cross-sectional analyses. To address this gap, we study rural gender gaps and rural–urban women gaps in financial inclusion for 19 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the 2017 and 2021 periods. We utilise the Global Findex databases, which contain the most detailed demand-side data collected at the individual level, and the Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder (KOB) decomposition method to estimate the average differences in financial inclusion between groups and how they have changed over time and identify the factors contributing to these differences. The KOB decomposition has an advantage over traditional methods like ordinary least squares (OLS) in that it divides observed differences into three categories: explained components (e.g., educat...