IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/45y2013i9p1201-1217.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Credit access and life satisfaction: evaluating the nonmonetary effects of micro finance

Author

Listed:
  • Leonardo Becchetti
  • Pierluigi Conzo

Abstract

Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) are used to claim that their impact goes beyond money since rescuing from exclusion uncollateralized poor borrowers significantly affects their dignity, self-esteem, social recognition, future economic perspectives and, through it, life satisfaction. Our article aims to verify the validity of this claim by evaluating whether access to microfinance loans has significant direct impact on life satisfaction beyond its indirect impact via current income changes. Empirical findings on a sample of poor borrowers in the suburbs of Buenos Aires show that, after controlling for survivorship, selection and interview bias, microfinance membership has a significant and positive effect on life satisfaction.

Suggested Citation

  • Leonardo Becchetti & Pierluigi Conzo, 2013. "Credit access and life satisfaction: evaluating the nonmonetary effects of micro finance," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(9), pages 1201-1217, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:45:y:2013:i:9:p:1201-1217
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2011.624086
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2011.624086
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bernard M. S. van Praag, 2007. "Perspectives from the Happiness Literature and the Role of New Instruments for Policy Analysis," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo, vol. 53(1), pages 42-68, March.
    2. Robert J. MacCulloch & Rafael Di Tella & Andrew J. Oswald, 2001. "Preferences over Inflation and Unemployment: Evidence from Surveys of Happiness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 335-341, March.
    3. Rojas, Mariano, 2008. "Intra-Household Arrangements and Health Satisfaction: Evidence from Mexico," WIDER Working Paper Series 057, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Andrew E. Clark & Orsolya Lelkes, 2005. "Deliver us from evil: religion as insurance," PSE Working Papers halshs-00590570, HAL.
    5. Armendariz de Aghion, Beatriz, 1999. "On the design of a credit agreement with peer monitoring," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 79-104, October.
    6. Gardner, Jonathan & Oswald, Andrew, 2004. "How is mortality affected by money, marriage, and stress?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(6), pages 1181-1207, November.
    7. Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell & Paul Frijters, 2004. "How Important is Methodology for the estimates of the determinants of Happiness?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(497), pages 641-659, July.
    8. Bruno S Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2000. "What are the sources of happiness?," Economics working papers 2000-27, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    9. Andrew E. Clark & Orsolya Lelkes, 2005. "Deliver us from evil: religion as insurance," Working Papers halshs-00590570, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Akoété Ega Agbodji & Yélé Maweki Batana & Dénis Ouedraogo, 2015. "Gender inequality in multidimensional welfare deprivation in West Africa: The case of Burkina Faso and Togo," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 42(11), pages 980-1004, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:applec:45:y:2013:i:9:p:1201-1217. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Chris Longhurst). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.