The impact of credit and savings interventions on women’s economic empowerment and agency: a meta-regression analysis

Credit and savings interventions have been heralded as a promising path to empowering women. However, the evidence base is inconclusive. Thus, the objective of this review is to synthesise the evidence in relation to the impact of credit and savings interventions on women’s economic empowerment and agency adopting a meta-regression approach. Eighteen experimental studies were identified and synthesised finding that effect sizes are very small and mixed in their sign and level of significance. Upon examining whether specific characteristics are associated with the effectiveness of credit and savings interventions, no statistically significant effects could be identified for credit interventions and only small effects for savings interventions, possibly because the latter have less of a risk of indebtedness. Overall, effects are small, levels of heterogeneity are high, risk of bias concerns of the included studies prevail, and publication bias exists. Credit and savings interventions by themselves are not the path to economically empower women. It may be that the non-financial features that emphasise awareness raising, skills training, education on women’s rights and enhancing women’s social networks are the driving force behind the empowerment of women, more so than financial features.