Description

During recent years, youths’ access to financial products and services has acquired growing importance in Chile, mirroring the tendency of developed economies. Accordingly, this document aims to provide comprehensive diagnostic by gathering and examining the available evidence. The analysis focuses on young people’s access to financial products, borrowing, and repayment behavior. Diverse indicators are constructed for this very purpose. Also, when the data allows it, comparisons are made between the young and adult populations as well as between developed and developing countries. On the one hand, these results indicate that youths’ financial inclusion in our country has made enormous advances –although there are still gaps to be filled. On the other hand, it is cautioned that both debt and default levels in youth have increased (although this behavior is also present in the overall population). This document claims that public policies can make an important contribution to improving youths’ access to financial products and services. Policy recommendations are made with the aim of promoting financial inclusion upon a solid basis.