Financial Inclusion and Development: Recent Impact Evidence

This Focus Note from CGAP is organized in three sections. The first section describes the extent to which poor households typically live and work in the informal economy and explores the implications of this for how access and use of financial services can benefit them. The second section summarizes recent empirical impact evidence at the microeconomic, local economy, and macroeconomic levels. The third section tees up two areas in which inclusive, low-cost financial systems can generate additional, indirect benefits for other public-sector and private-sector efforts.