Documenting the birth of a financial economy
Open accessAbstract
The birth and explosive growth of mobile money in Kenya has provided economists with an opportunity to study the evolution and impact of a new financial system. Mobile money is an innovation that allows individuals to store, send, and receive money on their mobile phone via text message. This system has opened up basic financial services to many who were previously excluded, and has had real and measurable impacts on the ability of households to protect themselves against health risks. Using a unique survey instrument covering nearly 2,300 households over 2008–2010, we first document the lightning-fast adoption of mobile money in Kenya, which was faster than most documented modern technologies in the United States. We then present evidence on how this innovation allows households to respond better to unexpected adverse health events. We find that in the face of these events, users of mobile money are better able to tap into remittances to finance additional health care costs without having to forego necessary expenditures on education, food, and other consumption needs.
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Only three eHealth projects were scaled up to national level.
“In terms of projects geographical distribution, 24 were executed in Nairobi whilst 15 were designed to have a national coverage but only 3 were scaled up.”
From Assessing the feasibility of eHealth and mHealth: a systematic review and analysis of initiatives implemented in Kenya (2017) · cites this paper as [29]
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Njoroge, M., Zurovac, D., Ogara, E. A. A., Chuma, J., & Kirigia, D. (2017) · BMC Research Notes · doi:10.1186/s13104-017-2416-0 · Cited by 100 · see citing works
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- Authors
- Suri, T., Jack, W., & Stoker, T. M.
- Affiliations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Georgetown University (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2012-06-11
- Volume
- 109
- Issue
- 26
- Pages
- 10257-10262
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC3387074
- OpenAlex
- W2042975635
- Cited by
- 96
- References
- 16
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 4
- FWCI
- 6.89
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Microfinance and Financial Inclusion
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Economic Growth and Development
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Accounting › Financial Literacy, Pension, Retirement Analysis
- Keywords
- mobile money, financial inclusion, technology adoption, household health expenditure, remittances, health care costs, financial innovation, Kenya
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