This symposium aims to present studies from Uganda, China, Ghana and United States that use a range of models of determinants of saving and asset accumulation. These include individual and family (economic and psychology), environmental (social class), and institutional and programmatic (economics and sociology).
Methods: The Uganda project (n=203) uses Hierarchical Regression Modeling (HRM) to assess the importance of a set of predictor variables, on savings. The study in the United States employs Growth Mixture Models (GMM) to explore asset accumulation patterns of families with young children (n=991 mothers and n=1036 children). The China project uses descriptive (n=1200), administrative and in-depth interviews (n=20) to assess associations of programmatic factors and asset accumulation. The Ghana project uses Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) (n=51) and cognitive interview (n=20) of samples of youth ages 12 to 14 to investigate internal and external factors of Financial Capability.
Results: In the Uganda study, HRMs analysis suggest that compared with the individual and environmental/structural perspective, institutional features explain a large part of the variance in saving outcome (incremental R2= 0.332). Findings from the China project indicate that the program increased local farmer's access to financial services by 92%, augmented local social insurance funds by an annual growth rate of 8.3%, increased retirement savings by participants by 57%. The Ghana project findings indicate that dropping items such as borrowing money and talking to family members improved reliability from α=.08 to α=.65 in a money management scale. In the United States study age of mothers at time of child birth (older mothers have 1.5 times odds of belonging to high savings classes than low saving class), and race, with non-Black/non-Hispanic mothers are 12.5 times the odds of belonging to the high savings class compared to African-American mothers.
Conclusions: The findings from this symposium suggest that institutional structures encouraging low-income individuals to save may contribute to a poverty reduction policy that shifts from just income supplementation to more inclusive wealth promotion policy.
