This paper shows that mobile money technology—an electronic wallet service that allows users to deposit, transfer, and receive money using their mobile phones—is positively correlated with increased school participation of children in school age. By using data from 4 African countries, we argue that, by reducing transaction costs, and by making it easier and less expensive to receive remittances, mobile money reduces the need for coping strategies that are detrimental to child development, such as withdrawing children from school and sending them to work. We find that mobile money increases the chances of children attending school. This finding is robust to different empirical models. In a nutshell, our results show that 1 million children could start attending school in low-income countries if mobile money was available to all.

本文表明，移动货币技术是一种电子钱包服务，允许用户使用手机进行存款，转账和收款，与学龄儿童入学率的提高呈正相关。通过使用来自四个非洲国家的数据，我们认为，通过降低交易成本，并使其更容易，更便宜地接收汇款，流动资金减少了对不利于儿童发展的应对策略的需求，例如使儿童辍学。并派他们去上班。我们发现，移动货币增加了孩子上学的机会。这一发现对于不同的经验模型是可靠的。简而言之，我们的结果表明，如果所有人都可以使用流动资金，则有100万儿童可以在低收入国家开始上学。