Knowledge and Financial Management in Households: An Examination of Married Women’s Perspectives in Chadbourn, North Carolina

This paper attempts to explore women’s perceptions about married women’s involvement in household financial decision-making in Chadbourn, North Carolina. The purpose of this research paper is to acquire knowledge and insights about women’s role in their families, in particular the husband-wife relationship with respect to financial decisions within households. Since the research’s purpose is to examine the relationship between women’s knowledge represented by level of education, and what role knowledge plays in the financial decision process in households, I have chosen interviewees with different levels of education. During the interviews, women spoke honestly about their situations and what challenges they were facing. Also, they spoke about gender roles under extreme poverty, and lack of jobs opportunities in the town where they live in. Most importantly, they expressed their perspectives about financial management in their families and what role level of education played in financial decision-making process. Most of the women had a significant role in controlling money in their families. The participants were specifically asked about their degree of involvement in financial decision-making for the household. Women’s involvement in household finances was found to be significantly positively related to their level of education. I wish to contribute towards a clearer understanding of the relationship between women’s level of education and their involvement in financial decision-making. The research ends with some recommendations from women’s voices from a poor town in North Carolina

Mobile phones in the diffusion of knowledge and persistence in inclusive human development in Sub-Saharan Africa

The success of inclusive development strategies in the post-2015 sustainable development agenda depends substantially on the adoption of common inclusive development policies among nations. Building on the relevance of a knowledge economy in the post-2015 development agenda, this study models the feasibility of common policies for inclusive human development in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). More specifically, we investigate the complementary role of knowledge diffusion in the inclusive benefits of mobile phone penetration in SSA from 2000 to 2012 by employing the Generalised Method of Moments. Knowledge diffusion variables include educational quality, innovation and Internet penetration. The main finding is that inclusive human development is persistently conditional on mobile phones in knowledge diffusion. Moreover, countries with low levels of inclusive human development are catching-up their counterparts with higher development. Policy implications are discussed with particular emphasis on how to leverage common knowledge economy initiatives for inclusive developmen

Reinventing foreign aid for inclusive and sustainable development: Kuznets, Piketty and the great policy reversal

This survey essay reviews over 200 papers in arguing that in order to achieve sustainable and inclusive development, foreign aid should not orient developing countries towards industrialisation in the perspective of Kuznets but in the view of Piketty. Abandoning the former’s view that inequality will fall with progress in industrialisation and placing more emphasis on inequality in foreign aid policy will lead to more sustainable development outcomes. Inter alia: mitigate short-term poverty; address concerns of burgeoning population growth; train recipient governments on inclusive development; fight corruption and mismanagement and; avoid the shortfalls of celebrated Kuznets’ conjectures. We discuss how the essay addresses post-2015 development challenges and provide foreign aid policy instruments with which discussed objectives can be achieved. In summary, the essay provides useful policy measures to avoid past pitfalls. ‘Output may be growing, and yet the mass of the people may be becoming poorer’ (Lewis, 1955). ‘Lewis led all developing countries to water, proverbially speaking, some African countries have so far chosen not to drink’ (Amavilah, 2014). Piketty (2014) has led all developing countries to the stream again and a challenging policy syndrome of our time is how foreign aid can help them to drink