Despite the rapid expansion of microfinance services in the past several decades, the low use of formal credit exhibited by poor households, the high dropout rates experienced by many microfinance institutions, and the prevalence of dual credit markets, even in the most saturated markets, suggest that microcredit may fail to meet the needs of many poor households. This paper examines the import...

Ruth Junkin is Rural Finance Specialist, Center for the Competitiveness of Ecoenterprises (CeCoEco), Tropical Agriculture Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE), Turrialba, Costa Rica. Globally, the past few decades have seen exponential growth and development in the microfinance sector. The worldwide movement to promote small-scale financing for micro and small enterprises has reached ov...

OBJECTIVES Women's participation in microfinance-based self-help groups (SHGs) and the resultant social capital may provide a basis to address the gap in health attainment for poor women and their children. We investigated the effect of combining a health program designed to improve health behaviours and outcomes with a microfinance-based SHG program. DESIGN A mixed method study was conducted...

INTRODUCTION Single solutions continue to be inadequate in confronting the prevalent problems of poverty, ill health and insufficient health system capacity worldwide. The poor need access to an integrated set of financial and health services to have income security and better health. Over 3500 microfinance institutions (MFIs) provide microcredit and financial services to more than 155 million ...