Nexus Between Financial Inclusion, Digital Inclusion and Health Outcomes: Evidence from Developing Economies

This research analyses the nexus between financial inclusion, digital inclusion and health outcomes in developing countries. In comparison with earlier studies, this study demonstrates an important research gap in addressing the combined impact of these factors. Basically, this research analyses the role of traditional banking and fintech in increasing financial inclusion and ultimately, enhancing health indices in emerging markets. By developing an index based upon the Entropy Weight Method, we show unique insights into bank and fintech-based financial inclusion, health outcomes and digital inclusion in these countries. Our results also show that digital inclusion plays a moderating role on the influence of financial inclusion on health outcomes. We evidenced that well-designed policies emphasising improvement in traditional and digital financial inclusion could potentially improve health outcomes in emerging markets. We also evidenced that improvement in digital inclusion (i.e., adoption of ICT) can facilitate improvement in both digital financial inclusion and health outcomes. Based upon our study, policymakers can utilise the index that we developed to compare health outcomes between different countries as well as to develop effective strategies for improvement in financial and digital inclusion. Our study emphasises the significance of understanding the multifaceted advantages of financial and digital inclusion in the development of health policies particularly in emerging markets.