BACKGROUND This study examines associations between female participation in a microcredit program in India, known as self help groups (SHGs), and women's health in the south Indian state of Kerala. Because SHGs do not have a formal health program, this provides a unique opportunity to assess whether SHG participation influences women's health via the social determinants of health. METHODS Thi...

Microfinance loans have expanded greatly in the recent years as a way of helping the poor gain cheaper loans, but percentage take-up of microcredit has remained lower than expectations. In an attempt to explain this phenomenon, this paper uses a randomized evaluation of the impact of introducing microfinance loans in a new urban setting in Hyderabad, India, to determine if lack of flexibility i...

One of the goals of the International Carbon Sequestration Project in South Khorasan Province is to study the sustainability of natural resources, especially in the rehabilitated areas, by reducing the reliance of villagers to the natural resources of the region, creating alternative livelihoods with job empowerment and solving the problems of villagers in the region, especially rural women. Th...

We replicate and reanalyse the most influential study of microcredit impacts (M. M. Pitt & S. R. Khandker’s, ‘The impact of group-based credit on poor households in Bangladesh: Does the gender of participants matter?’, published in the Journal of Political Economy, 106, 1998). That study was celebrated for showing that microcredit reduces poverty, a much hoped for possibility (though one not co...

Informal sector lenders remain a strong presence in rural India in terms of providing credit facilities in rural India. Farmers and rural poor borrowings from Money lenders and other informal sources of rural credit still significant this sources some extent i.e. 77 percent to 32 percent. In this situation micro finance has emerged as an alternative source of rural credit, microfinance programm...

Microcredit financing is extensively considered as an effective development method for poverty mitigation and women empowerment. Nevertheless, relevant studies reflected opposing outcomes on microfinance effects consisting of positive, zero, negative impacts. Thus, this research investigated Al-Amal Bank’s microcredit impacts empowerment in Yemen, one the poorest Middle Eastern nations. A panel...