Financial stress, financial literacy, and financial insecurity in India’s informal sector during COVID-19

  • Received April 19, 2022;
    Accepted June 24, 2022;
    Published June 27, 2022
  • Author(s)
  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/imfi.19(2).2022.25
  • Article Info
    Volume 19 2022, Issue #2, pp. 285-294
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

The lockdowns and restrictions imposed to control COVID-19 have made life miserable for people, especially those involved in informal economic activities. The pandemic induced financial hardships, caused financial anxiety and financial stress among informal sector participants. This study aimed to measure and analyze the financial stress and financial insecurity of one of the important informal sector elements (street vendors) in India. Street vendors in Bangalore were interviewed in this descriptive research through personal interaction and telephonic interviews. The collected primary data were processed using SPSS statistical package. The results have indicated that the pandemic inflicted financial stress on street vendors irrespective of their gender, marital status, age, education, monthly income, and type of product dealt. Financial stress levels varied depending on the number of dependents of street vendors and their business nature. Financial literacy differed according to street vendors’ marital status. A person becomes extremely sensitive and cautious in personal finance matters on getting married. Financial stress and financial literacy correlated negatively. 89.5% of street vendors perceived that they had financial insecurity in the future due to this pandemic. The results indicated that financial stress and financial literacy did not affect financial insecurity perceptions of street vendors. The predictors of financial insecurity have been marital status and the number of dependents of the street vendors (r2: 16.6%). However, marital status alone impacted the 6% variance in financial insecurity. This study concluded that the pandemic caused financial stress and financial insecurity among street vendors, but not financial stress and financial literacy.

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    • Table 1. Variances to financial stress
    • Table 2. Variances to financial literacy
    • Table 3. Omnibus test of model coefficients
    • Table 4. Model summary
    • Table 5. Hosmer and Lemeshow test
    • Table 6. Forward stepwise model
    • Table 7. Omnibus test of model coefficients
    • Table 8. Summary of the model
    • Table 9. Hosmer-Lemeshow test
    • Table 10. Backward stepwise model
    • Conceptualization
      Thangaraj Ravikumar, Mali Sriram
    • Data curation
      Thangaraj Ravikumar, Girish S., R Anuradha, M Gnanendra
    • Formal Analysis
      Thangaraj Ravikumar, R Anuradha, M Gnanendra
    • Investigation
      Thangaraj Ravikumar, Mali Sriram, Girish S., R Anuradha, M Gnanendra
    • Software
      Thangaraj Ravikumar, Girish S.
    • Writing – original draft
      Thangaraj Ravikumar
    • Methodology
      Mali Sriram
    • Supervision
      Mali Sriram, R Anuradha
    • Writing – review & editing
      Mali Sriram, R Anuradha
    • Project administration
      Girish S., R Anuradha, M Gnanendra
    • Resources
      Girish S., R Anuradha
    • Visualization
      Girish S., M Gnanendra
    • Validation
      M Gnanendra