The role of cultural attributes towards domestic savings in Uganda

Abstract

The objective of this study was to examine the role of cultural attributes towards savings in Uganda. The attributes used in this study were age, gender, religion, residence, marital status, occupation, knowledge about savings, form of savings, active monthly saving, physical assets, purpose of savings, contribution to pension schemes, having health insurance, dependent children, dependence on children, expectancy of old age financial support and retirement preparedness. The analysis was done using frequency distribution, chi-square tests and logistic regression. In the results, more than half of the respondents (53.13%) were females followed by males (46.88%). Catholic and Muslims were the dominant religions in the study (37.50%) each followed by others (25.0%). More than half of the respondents were from urban areas (90.63%) followed by the rest from rural areas (9.38%). Married respondents were (68.75%), followed by the single (18.75%), cohabiting (9.38%) and lastly the divorced (3.13%). Furthermore, respondents were mostly Employed (34.38%) and self-employed (34.38%), the unemployed (12.50%) and the retired were (18.75%). All respondents confessed having knowledge about savings and having savings. Majority had formal savings (56.25%) followed by those with both formal and informal savings (40.63%) and those with informal savings only (3.13 %). (46.88%) were not active savers and (53.13 %) were actively savings. (62.50%) had physical assets while (37.50%) didn’t. People saving for retirement were (37.50%), hazard preparedness were (43.75%) followed by others (18.75%). More than half of respondents were contributing to pension schemes (53.13%) and (46.88%) weren’t. Half of respondents didn’t have life insurance cover and another half had. (78.13%) respondents had dependent children and (21.88%) didn’t. Majority of respondents didn’t depend on their children (75.00%) followed by (15.69%) who did. Lastly, one half of respondents were expecting support from their children and the other didn’t. In the multivariate stage of this study, the combination of the independent variables was not significant according to the results where all the corresponding p-values were >0.05 implying that the independent variables chosen didn’t explain the variation in the dependent variable. The findings indicate the need to (i)address gender pay gaps, (ii)promote financial literacy, (iii)implement policies supporting work-life balance and (iv)child care subsidies or assistance.