Access to savings and household welfare evidence from a household survey in The Gambia

In this study, we provide evidence on the impact of access to formal savings on household well-being in The Gambia. Specifically, we study how access to formal savings can impact household outcomes such as total spending, ownership of durable assets, health spending, and education spending. Using a representative household survey and kernel ridge regression method, we find that household access to formal savings has a positive and statistically significant impact on all outcomes except health spending. Furthermore, we find that the largest effect size of access to savings is on education spending. However, the impact estimates on education and food expenditure are not very robust to a mild presence of hidden bias. Overall, we find a robust impact for total spending and asset ownership. Hence, increasing household access to formal savings can improve household well-being in The Gambia.