Financial shocks and savings amongst Africa's middle class: Insights from FinTech data

IF 4.8 2区经济学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE

International Review of Economics & Finance Pub Date : 2025-07-08 DOI:10.1016/j.iref.2025.104414

Jamila Abubakar , Ahmet F. Aysan , Mustafa Disli , Marwa Elnahass

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Abstract

A significant body of literature suggests the African middle-class's vulnerability to financial shocks. We utilise a unique dataset from a FinTech platform containing detailed savings transactions in Nigeria from 2017 to 2022. Our analysis examines the effect of financial shocks on financial resilience and savings accumulation for middle-income individuals and young people, controlling for demographic and account characteristics. Our findings indicate that financial shocks lead to savings volatility and decreased savings accumulation for these groups. Women, younger people, and people with lower salaries exhibit less volatile savings. We find compelling evidence that non-food shocks have a more significant impact on volatility and dissavings for these sub-groups. These findings highlight the critical role of FinTech platforms in understanding and mitigating the effects of financial shocks and underscore the need for protective policies to enhance financial resilience amidst economic volatility.

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非洲中产阶级的金融冲击和储蓄：来自金融科技数据的见解

大量文献表明，非洲中产阶级容易受到金融冲击。我们利用金融科技平台的独特数据集，其中包含2017年至2022年尼日利亚的详细储蓄交易。我们的分析考察了金融冲击对中等收入个人和年轻人的金融弹性和储蓄积累的影响，控制了人口和账户特征。我们的研究结果表明，金融冲击导致这些群体的储蓄波动和储蓄积累减少。女性、年轻人和工资较低的人的储蓄波动较小。我们发现令人信服的证据表明，非粮食冲击对这些子群体的波动性和储蓄不足有更大的影响。这些发现强调了金融科技平台在理解和减轻金融冲击影响方面的关键作用，并强调了在经济波动中采取保护性政策以增强金融抵御能力的必要性。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

International Review of Economics & Finance Multiple-

CiteScore

7.30

自引率

2.20%

发文量

253

期刊介绍： The International Review of Economics & Finance (IREF) is a scholarly journal devoted to the publication of high quality theoretical and empirical articles in all areas of international economics, macroeconomics and financial economics. Contributions that facilitate the communications between the real and the financial sectors of the economy are of particular interest.