أثر الشمول المالي على الفقر دراسة قياسية حالة الجزائر فترة 1990-2023

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the impact of financial inclusion on poverty in Algeria over the period 1990–2023, against the backdrop of rapid transformations in the global financial system and growing international attention to linking financial inclusion with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The significance of the study stems from three major gaps identified in the international literature (geographic, methodological, and applied), as a bibliometric analysis of the Scopus database revealed the limited presence of North African countries, particularly Algeria, among more than 1,582 studies published between 2010 and 2025. The study adopts a sequential mixed-methods design combining three complementary approaches: a descriptive-analytical method to establish the theoretical framework for financial inclusion (across its four dimensions — access, usage, quality, and welfare) and poverty (absolute, relative, the capability approach, and multidimensional poverty); a bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer software to map prevailing research trends and identify existing gaps; and an inferential econometric approach based on the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model, applied to annual data for the Algerian economy (34 observations, 1990–2023) drawn from the World Bank, Banque d’Algérie, and Findex databases. The econometric results reveal a strong negative correlation between the financial inclusion index and the poverty rate (–0.824). The ARDL bounds test, following the Pesaran et al. (2001) methodology, confirms a statistically significant long-run cointegrating relationship (F-statistic = 5.234, exceeding the upper bound at the 1% significance level). The long-run estimates show a statistically significant negative effect of financial inclusion on poverty (β = –0.1234; p<0.01; R² = 0.9234), while the Error Correction Model (ECM) confirms an effective adjustment mechanism (ECT = –0.4567), restoring equilibrium at a speed of approximately 46% per year. The impulse response function (IRF) further shows that the negative effect of financial inclusion on poverty persists for more than two decades, and the results remain robust across multiple alternative measures of financial inclusion and poverty, as well as instrumental variable (2SLS) estimations. The study concludes that financial inclusion constitutes an effective and sustainable strategic tool for reducing poverty in Algeria, provided it is integrated with complementary policies in education, social protection, and institutional governance. Forecast simulations indicate that the poverty rate could fall to 3.6% by 2035 under the baseline scenario, opening promising avenues for future research on digital finance, multidimensional poverty, and comparative studies across North African countries.