Search Results (8)

Microfinance aims to promote financial inclusion among underprivileged individuals, particularly through progressive microcredit, which enables borrowers to access increasing loan amounts over time. This study examines the conditions under which progressive microcredit positively impacts both small business performance and household well-being, considering borrower characteristics and business activity conditions. Using a dataset of 278 households across 110 administrative sectors in Tunisia from 2012 to 2020, this study employs two-stage least squares (2SLS) and three-stage least squares (3SLS) econometric techniques to estimate simultaneous equation models. The findings reveal that the cumulative amount of progressive microcredit received is mainly determined by project capital, suggesting that businesses with higher capital requirements tend to secure larger loans over successive cycles. Household well-being is significantly influenced by progressive microcredit, household income, net business benefit, rate of development index, and homeownership. Meanwhile, business profitability is driven by project capital and total fixed assets, highlighting the long-term impact of microcredit. The results highlight the critical role of microfinance in enabling small-scale entrepreneurs to expand their businesses while simultaneously improving household financial security. By promoting sustainable income generation, progressive microcredit serves as a key instrument in poverty alleviation and economic stability. This study underscores the necessity for microfinance institutions (MFIs) to tailor their lending strategies, ensuring optimal loan progression that balances business expansion with financial sustainability. Additionally, policymakers should refine microcredit frameworks to enhance accessibility and long-term economic benefits for low-income borrowers. Overall, these insights contribute to the broader discourse on financial inclusion and sustainable development, emphasizing that progressive microcredit not only facilitates entrepreneurship, but also serves as a driver of socioeconomic mobility. Full article

This research examined factors that help microfinance achieve sustained poverty reduction based on a systematic literature review (SLR). A search was conducted on the SCOPUS database up to December 2023. After analyzing hundreds of documents, a subset of 30 articles was subject to in-depth analysis, exploring factors and corresponding measurement indicators for sustainable poverty reduction in microfinance contexts. This article emphasizes that sustained poverty reduction is a gradual process requiring ongoing efforts from both Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) and governments. Two key success factors are empowering borrowers and ensuring the microfinance programs themselves are profitable. When implemented in an integrated and coordinated manner, these factors can empower individuals to escape poverty by fostering self-employment and income generation, ultimately reducing dependence on external support. Additionally, the study highlights the role of personality traits in influencing long-term entrepreneurial success. The findings provide valuable tools for MFIs and policymakers. MFIs gain a practical framework to guide their interventions towards sustained poverty reduction. Policymakers can leverage the identified factors and indicators when designing and implementing microfinance policies with a long-term focus on poverty alleviation. This study breaks new ground by presenting an operational framework that categorizes and integrates two critical factor groups: empowerment and beneficiary profitability. Furthermore, it links these factors to corresponding measurement indicators within a unified framework, enabling a more holistic assessment of poverty reduction efforts. Full article

Microfinance has become one of the most important financing alternatives for business start-ups, especially for vulnerable groups in poor regions. Microfinance provides access to financial products, especially to people who have been excluded from the traditional financial system. However, the mainstream literature on microfinance shows its impact on poverty alleviation, but it is not yet well developed to understand its dynamizing role in the entrepreneurial sector. There is still a large gap in the literature on analyzing microfinance as a financing alternative, so this paper seeks to find this relationship in the literature. A bibliometric analysis is applied, both of the performance of the publications and a word co-occurrence analysis during the period 2017–2022. The articles indexed in the Web of Science have been considered and systematized through the SCIMAT software v1.1.04, developed by the Soft Computing and Intelligent Information Systems Research Group, University of Granada, Granada, Spain. Microfinance institutions, education, entrepreneurship, organizational performance, business microcredits, and women microentrepreneurs have been identified as driving themes to be considered in future analyses. At the end of the document, the proposed future lines of research are presented. In addition, the results show the growing interest of the academic community in the topic, with 2022 being the year with the highest number of articles published on the topic. Full article

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) play a significant role in financial-inclusion and poverty-alleviation activities. A critical challenge facing MFIs is of how they all can build their own capacity for sustainable and healthy development. By using the data from the pilot survey of 65 microcredit companies in Zhejiang, China, this paper explores the factors affecting MFIs activities by principal component analysis and analyzes the key Influencing factors and sustainable development performance with the analysis of variance and multi-regression model. The results indicate that four key factors of operational technology, external environment, financial condition, and institution size have a significant positive effect on the economic sustainability performance of MFIs, while the adjusted institution size has an insignificant positive effect on operational sustainability performance, which means that key factors of MFI sustainability have a greater impact on economic sustainability performance than operational sustainability performance. Full article

Micro-credit for poverty alleviation is an important financial measure of targeted poverty reduction and rural revitalization in China. This paper employs the OLS model and Logit model to empirically test the effect of micro-credit for poverty alleviation on the income level and stability of income growth of farmers based on the field survey data of 458 registered poverty-stricken farmer households in Fuping County and Quyang County of Hebei Province. The results suggest that micro-credit for poverty alleviation can increase farmers’ income, stabilize the growth of their income, and exert significant short-term and long-term effects on income growth and poverty alleviation. The specialized farmer cooperatives, the scale of production and operation, the proportion of family labor force, and the education level of the head of the farmer’s household exert a significantly positive effect on the farmers’ income and the stable growth of their income. There is a significant interaction between micro-credit for poverty alleviation and specialized farmer cooperatives. The physical conditions of family members exert a negative effect on the stable growth of their income, and other financing channels have no significant effect. Full article

(1) Background: The growing number of banking entities linked to the field of banking since the 1980s requires a preliminary classification of this sector in order to identify the main stylized facts of this wide conglomerate of institutions oriented to financial sustainability as well as the establishment of an effective differentiation that can objectively distinguish the different types of institutions operating in this subfield of finance. The objective of this research is to obtain a frame of reference by determining the main defining characteristics of these entities and their differentiating elements, by verifying, on an analytical basis, the ways in which they provide a social service in the pursuit of financial inclusion. (2) Methods: A double methodological perspective is used jointly: Factor Analysis and Cluster Analysis. (3) Results: It was possible to delimit two significant groups: Ethical Banks per se and Poverty Alleviation Banks, defining their main differences and analogies. (4) The taxonomy conducted revealed that Ethical Banks per se are primarily established in developed countries, while Poverty Alleviation Banks focus their actions on developing nations. Based on this classification, we establish a series of practical policies that support the future deployment of sustainable banking. Full article

The poverty alleviation microcredit policy is an important financial poverty alleviation policy that has been widely implemented in China in recent years. However, whether this policy can effectively increase the income of poor households is controversial. In order to measure the implementation effect of the policy, we analyzed the mechanism of the poverty alleviation microcredit on the income of poor households. Then, the paper used micro-survey data to conduct an empirical test using the propensity score matching method to study its effect on the production income of these poor households. The results show that the poverty alleviation microcredit positively affects the production income of poor households, including those who are poor due to lack of funds and poor households with female heads. Therefore, we should continue to implement the poverty alleviation microcredit policy, and establish relevant supporting measures, such as strengthening agricultural production capital subsidies, increasing agricultural production insurance, further improving the implementation efficiency of the poverty alleviation microcredit policy, and increasing the income of poor households. Full article

Microcredit is an effective instrument that has been recognized to alleviate poverty, especially in developing countries such as Bangladesh. This study seeks to use microcredit as an instrument to bridge the gap between the accessibility of microcredit among poor rural women and sustainable socio-economic development, providing novelty to the concept of “sustainability of empowerment”. In addition, this study employed poor rural women to estimate the empowerment performance of microcredit borrowers compared to non-borrowers in the same socio-economic environment as it relates to microcredit in rural Bangladesh. A regression analysis was used to accomplish these objectives. This study also used propensity score matching techniques to find an easy way to access microcredit. The empirical results not only involve participation in microcredit accessibility but also the particular qualitative attributes of women empowerment. The results also suggest that sustainability is accompanied by affluence among microcredit borrowers, as indicated by women empowerment. The outcome of the empirical analysis shows that there is a significant impact of microcredit on increasing participation in the overall decision-making process, in legal awareness, independent movements, and mobility, as well as enhancing living standards to encourage sustainable women empowerment. This study recommends future investigations for microcredit providers to explore how to build an integrated, holistic approach to women empowerment in Bangladesh. Full article