Urban Aboriginal use of fringe financial institutions: Survey evidence from Prince George, British Columbia
This paper analyses the use of fringe financial institutions (FFIs), such as payday loan and check cashing providers, by urban Aboriginal people based on a survey undertaken in Prince George, British Columbia. We found that 60% of FFIs’ clients surveyed self-identified as Aboriginal. Their characteristics, compared to the non-Aboriginal FFI clients, included having lower average incomes, lower levels of education, more likely to be female, a higher incidence of being unemployed, higher levels of financial exclusion, and less satisfaction with the service provided by FFIs. We find that government policy towards regulating the FFI industry is inadequate for meeting the basic financial needs of urban Aboriginal people.
Banking on the Margin in Canada
This article analyzes the socioeconomic characteristics of the financially excluded in Canada using the 1999 Statistics Canada Survey of Financial Security and two surveys sponsored by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada in 2001 and 2005. The authors find that financial exclusion is more concentrated among low-income Canadians; low-income, low-level of assets, and single-parent statuses are correlated with being unbanked. A review of banking preferences of low-income people indicates that economically disadvantaged households are more concerned about convenience and not as interested in new banking technologies.
The Use of Qualitative Information in Macro-Economic Policy Analysis
The majority of macro-economic policy models takes for granted that conflicts among objectives can be assessed by means of a tradeoff analysis. Such tradeoffs imply that sacrifices and benefits of various impacts of decisions can be measured on a cardinal scale, so that a conventional macro-economic utility or welfare analysis can be applied.