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Microfinance and Household Poverty Reduction: New Evidence from India

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Author Info

  • Imai, Katsushi S.
  • Arun, Thankom
  • Annim, Samuel Kobina

Abstract

Summary The objective of the present study is to examine whether household access to microfinance reduces poverty. Using national household data from India, treatment effects model is employed to estimate the poverty-reducing effects of Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) loans for productive purposes, such as investment in agriculture or non-farm businesses on household poverty levels. These models take into account the endogenous binary treatment effects and sample selection bias associated with access to MFIs. Despite some limitations, such as those arising from potential unobservable important determinants of access to MFIs, significant positive effect of MFI productive loans on multidimensional welfare indicator has been confirmed. The significance of "treatment effects" coefficients has been verified by both Tobit and Propensity Score Matching (PSM) models. In addition, we found that loans for productive purposes were more important for poverty reduction in rural than in urban areas. However in urban areas, simple access to MFIs has larger average poverty-reducing effects than the access to loans from MFIs for productive purposes. This leads to exploring service delivery opportunities that provide an additional avenue to monitor the usage of loans to enhance the outreach.

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Bibliographic Info

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal World Development.

Volume (Year): 38 (2010)
Issue (Month): 12 (December)
Pages: 1760-1774
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Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:38:y:2010:i:12:p:1760-1774

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Related research

Keywords: microfinance; poverty; evaluation; India; Propensity Score Matching;

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References

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Katsushi Imai & Thankom Arun, 2008. "Does Microfinance Reduce Poverty in India?," The School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 0814, Economics, The University of Manchester.
  2. Robert Cull & Asli Demirguc-Kunt & Jonathan Morduch, 2009. "Microfinance Meets the Market," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(1), pages 167-92, Winter.
  3. John Weiss & Heather Montgomery, 2005. "Great Expectations: Microfinance and Poverty Reduction in Asia and Latin America," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 33(3-4), pages 391-416.
  4. Heckman, James J, 1979. "Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(1), pages 153-61, January.
  5. P. Mosley, 2001. "Microfinance and Poverty in Bolivia," The Journal of Development Studies, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 37(4), pages 101-132.
  6. Amemiya, Takeshi, 1984. "Tobit models: A survey," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1-2), pages 3-61.
  7. Angus Deaton & Valerie Kozel, 2005. "Data and Dogma: The Great Indian Poverty Debate," World Bank Research Observer, Oxford University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 177-199.
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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Katsushi S. Imai & Raghav Gaiha & Ganesh Thapa & Samuel Kobina Annim & Aditi Gupta, 2012. "Financial Performance of Microfinance Institutions-A Macroeconomic and Institutional Perspective," Discussion Paper Series DP2012-04, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University.
  2. Asad K. Ghalib & Issam Malki & Katsushi S. Imai, 2011. "The Impact of Microfinance and its Role in Easing Poverty of Rural Households: Estimations from Pakistan," Discussion Paper Series DP2011-28, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University.
  3. David Hulme & Thankom Arun, 2011. "What’s wrong and right with microfinance – missing an angle on responsible finance?," Brooks World Poverty Institute Working Paper Series 15511, BWPI, The University of Manchester.

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