Access to finance and rural youth entrepreneurship in Benin: Is there a gender gap?

Rural entrepreneurship is an important employment generation intervention for the fast-growing young labour force in developing countries. Many bottlenecks including access to finance impede rural youths from performing their new ventures. This paper examines impact of on youths' Benin using data second wave School-To-Work Transition Survey, involving over 900 youths. The employs endogenous switching regression technique, combined with propensity score matching, investigate drivers and its intention performance. results indicate that age, education, poverty status, experience, working agricultural sector existence a bank branch are determinants finance. also show increases probability youth by 15.2% average. Moreover, study shows significant gender gap 5.24% among Benin. These suggest policymakers should facilitate youth, especially women, encouraging formal financial institutions reduce credit eligibility conditions those who do not have collateral.