Embedded Files
Our data are held in an Excel workbook. Examples of the more than 1.5 million transaction records are shown here.
The data is available to serious scholars. Please contact Stuart Rutherford at write.ser@gmail.com for information.
Having completed 10 years of uninterrupted data collection in mid 2025, we have posted charts for each and every one of our 60 Diarists which give an overview of their records. Our intention is to update these 'profiles' as time passes.
Each post consists of annotated charts showing monthly totals. The values given in the charts have not been adjusted for inflation. We feel we are on firmer ground sticking to 'actual' or nominal values, but in a few cases we do discuss what the charts would look like if they were adjusted to 'real' values.
The first chart shows what we call their 'primary balance' - their total earned and unearned income, their household and business expenditure, and the resulting balance. The chart is accompanied by text describing the household, its history, its assets and its occupations.
Further charts will show whether and how gifts (both received and given), loans (taken and repaid, and given and recovered ) and savings (deposited and withdrawn, and accepted and returned) have modified the picture. Again, text explains what the Diarists told us about their use of these transactions.
We hope that these 60 postings will constitute a set of case histories of unparalleled accuracy and depth, which will be of use to scholars and others interested in the question of how low-income households manage their money. For example, we hope they will provide scholars with evidence on disputed aspects of the Financial Inclusion movement. An example is described below.
Do loans and savings services really help low-income households?
It is almost half a century since Md Yunus gave the first microcredit loans to some very poor Bangladeshi women, and a quarter of a century since the bank that he created – Grameen Bank – refocused on collecting savings as well as issuing loans. Many organisations have since supported or extended the scope of this work.
Despite this, a fierce debate[1] still rages about the extent that microcredit, or microfinance, (or ‘financial inclusion’ as the field is increasingly called) really helps the poor.
A frequently noted difficulty in resolving this debate is the lack of sufficient evidence to make sound judgments. We are short of good quality studies of what happens when ‘financial inclusion’ reaches poor households.
We hope our postings will be useful in exploring this and similar questions, and we invite users to comment, and to request further data and background information. But first please visit the other pages to see the many posting already available on this site.
[1] Philip Mader articulates the sceptics’ view of financial inclusion in his 2017 article Contesting Financial Inclusion, in Development and Change 49(2): 461–483. DOI: 10.1111/dech.12368
Here are the selection buttons for the full set of 60 Diarists
Editor's picks: 01; 03 and 07 as a contrasting pair; 10; 16; 20; 26; 27; 29; 32; 35; 36; 39; 53; 55; 62; 66; 67; 67
coming soon: browsing by topic
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