Measurement and Determinants of Financial Awareness of Microfinance Clients
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Abstract
The promotion of financial education for poor people in developing countries calls for work on several fronts; one of which is to develop a measure to evaluate the outcome of financial education in relation to broader development goals. This paper uses Microfinance Clients' Awareness Index (MCAI) to determine the level of financial awareness of microfinance clients. This index is a comprehensive measure that incorporates information on several aspects of financial awareness in one single number lying
between 1 and 2, where 1 denotes complete ignorance and 2 indicates complete financial awareness of the microfinance product. Also, the factors that were associated with some degree of significance to MCAI were attempted to be identified Among different socio-economic variables, age group and highest education found to be t associated with the MCAI scores.
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