Mobile money as insurance against climate shocks
Financial inclusion is a large topic in the finance journals, and climate shocks a growing one in economics, but only 14 of 367 recent inclusion and payments papers carry a climate or disaster keyword. When droughts and floods hit, does mobile money bring help fast enough to keep households from selling assets or taking children out of school?
What prompted this#
Since October 2025, 367 papers carry a financial-inclusion, digital-payment or mobile-money keyword (229 in finance journals, 88 in economics), and only 14 of them carry a climate, weather, drought, flood, disaster or shock keyword. "Climate shocks" appears on 44 papers, 32 of them in economics. In the management journals, "inclusive growth" (6 papers in July–September 2026 against about 1 expected) and "developing countries" are rising.
Questions#
- After droughts or floods, do households with mobile money receive more remittances, and faster?
- Does that protect their consumption, their assets (livestock, land) and their children's schooling?
- Does the effect hold where agent networks are thin, or does the shock knock out the network itself?
Data that could help#
Geocoded household surveys (LSMS, DHS), rainfall and flood data (ERA5, satellite flood maps), and mobile money agent locations and transactions where available.
Next step#
Merge household panels from one East African country with rainfall shocks and the households' mobile money use, and compare how much consumption falls after droughts.