Mobile Money and Population Well-Being in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Staggered Difference-in-Differences

Mobile money has spread faster in Sub-Saharan Africa than in any other region, yet its contribution to the non-monetary dimensions of well-being remains poorly documented at the regional scale. This paper assesses the effect of electronic money on population well-being in the forty-nine countries of Sub-Saharan Africa over 1995-2022. Following the capability approach, well-being is measured by the Human Development Index (HDI) and its health, education and standard-of-living components, complemented by the inequality-adjusted HDI and infant mortality. Electronic money is measured directly, by the launch date of the first mobile money service and by usage intensity from the IMF Financial Access Survey, rather than by mobile phone penetration. Identification relies on difference-in-differences estimators robust to staggered adoption and heterogeneous effects, complemented by system GMM and fixed-effects regressions on usage intensity. Averaged over the post-launch years, launch is associated with an increase in the health index of 0.020 to 0.029 points, i.e. 1.3 to 1.9 years of life expectancy at birth; the dynamic effect builds up gradually and reaches about 0.043 points after eight years. System GMM points to a long-run effect of about 0.021 points on the HDI. Active accounts transmit broader gains than registered accounts, whereas mobile phone penetration has no effect. No effect is found on education or infant mortality. Two results qualify the causal interpretation of the health effect: the pre-launch event-study coefficients, although small, are jointly significant, and the effect disappears when year effects are allowed to vary with initial HIV prevalence. The health estimates should therefore be read as an upper bound. Overall, the evidence is consistent with mobile money improving mainly the health dimension of well-being, and public policies should target the effective use of accounts rather than mere account ownership.