Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab assessment of microcredit

Most countries have poverty alleviation policies.

However poverty alleviation is a very challenging and diverse problem to tackle.

Not every policy or strategy dreamed up is going to be successful. Different environments will require different methods. Differing cultures and different personalities will respond in a myriad of ways to the same inputs and then deliver widely divergent outputs.

What works well in one place has no guarantee that it will work in any other place.

That has been the experience gained from scaling poverty alleviation efforts and implementing so called best practices.

One size does not fit all.

I've talked a lot about microcredit in this blog so far, but for all the hype the results are very mixed.

J-PAL has published results of their randomized impact evaluations that provide a more measured perspective of the results of these types of interventions.

In one of their target studies the policy was implemented specifically to increased access to microcredit to impact the economic and social well-being of women and their families in Hyderabad, India.

Education and female empowerment: Researchers found little evidence to suggest that microcredit empowered women or improved investment in children's education in this context. Women in treatment areas were more likely to manage more self-employment activities than those in comparison areas, but they were no more likely to make decisions about household spending, investment, savings, or education. In both follow-up surveys, there was no change in the probability that children or teenagers were enrolled in school, though enrollment for both boys and girls was already high at over 90 percent in the comparison group. There was also no change in the number of hours worked by girls or boys aged 5 to 15, although teenage girls did work fewer hours per week after 1.5 years.

Its a great read and informs perspective for anybody lending to microcredit institution.

https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/measuring-impact-microfinance-hyderabad-india
picture and quote taken from linked study