Impact of micro-credit programmes on poverty alleviation in Bangladesh

Abstract

This present study examines the impact of micro-credit programmes of six government organisations (GO), non-government organisations (NGO) and micro-finance institutes (MFI) on poverty alleviation in Bangladesh using a purposive sample of 406 credit receivers. Alongside respondent’s perceived change in poverty situation this study devised an alternative measure of poverty change based on the change in household wealth and education of a household. Two-level binary logistic regression and multinomial logistic regression analyses suggest that amount of loan, different GO /NGOs/MFIs, satisfaction level, taken loan before and micro-credit as main means of asset change were the determinants of change in poverty situation. Significant community level variation was found in this analysis which indicates that the respondents from different communities with same set of characteristics will exhibit different influences on the change in poverty situation. Further research should be carried out to identify the sources of such variation to optimise the effect of micro-credit.