World Bank Reports That Microcredit Works After All

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Via Tyler Cowen, the World Bank has released a report that examines microfinance in Bangladesh over the longest period yet studied. The results were quite positive:

The results of the basic model unequivocally show that group-based credit programs have significant positive effects in raising household welfare including per capita consumption, household non-land assets and net worth. Microfinance increases income and expenditure, the labor supply of males and females, non-land asset and net worth as well as boys’ and girls’ schooling. Microfinance, especially female credit, also reduces poverty. The results using long-panel data thus confirm most of the earlier findings that microfinance matters a lot, and more for female than for male borrowers.

….Membership in multiple programs has grown steadily from none to 33 percent in 2010/11….Trading is perhaps now saturated with microcredit loans and households have already started to experience diminishing returns. In such circumstances, households must be assisted through skill training and the development of improved marketing networks to expand activities in more rewarding sectors and beyond the local economy; otherwise, microfinance expansion cannot be sustained. In short, the current microfinance policy of credit expansion alone may not be enough to boost income and productivity, and, hence, sustained poverty reduction.

I don’t have anything to add to this, but I wanted to at least make a note of it. A few years ago, there was a huge vogue in microcredit, which was broadly portrayed as a panacea for poor countries. Then there was a backlash, with several studies suggesting that it had been overhyped and didn’t really improve the lives of the poor much. Now this study, which looks at data over the course of 20 years, strongly concludes that—up to a point—microcredit really does produce results. I’ve been vaguely down on microcredit since reading some of those initial reports a few years ago, and I figure that might be a common response. This study pretty clearly suggests that we shouldn’t have been so pessimistic, and for that reason I wanted to pass it along.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate