Fighting Poverty with Microcredit: Experience in Bangladesh (World Bank Publication) [Hardcover]

Shahidur Khandker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1998 | Series: World Bank Publication

With increasing assistance from the World Bank and other donors, microfinance is emerging as an instrument for reducing poverty and improving the poor's access to financial services in low-income countries. Providing the poor with access to financial services is one of many ways to help increase their incomes and productivity. In many countries, however, traditional financial institutions have failed to provide this service. Microcredit and cooperative programs fill this gap. They provide credit through social mechanisms such as group-based lending to reach the poor and other clients, including women, who lack access to formal financial institutions. Their purpose is to help the poor become self-employed and thus escape poverty. This book examines the experiences of the Grameen Bank, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, and the Bangladesh Rural Development Board's Rural Development Project-12 in order to quantify the potential and limitations of microcredit programs as an instrument for reducing poverty and delivering financial services to the poor. A copublication of the World Bank and Oxford University Press.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: World Bank Publications (November 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195211219
• ISBN-13: 978-0195211214
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,084,334 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Group-based lending that works, July 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Fighting Poverty with Microcredit: Experience in Bangladesh (World Bank Publication) (Hardcover)

Three microcredit programs (Grameen Bank, BRAC and RD-12) are thoroughly discussed and evaluated as instruments for poverty reduction. With loan recovery rates higher than 90% for landless borrowers, group-based lending (that is, group guarantee to repay individual loans) is the key to substantial household economic improvement - 5% of participating households lift themselves out of poverty every year. Rigorous statistical analysis gives a wealth of information on household-level and village-level results in terms of consumption, household net worth, childrens' schooling and nutrition, production and income. The effects of men's and women's credit are evaluated separately throughout the book, giving some insight on the dynamics of Bangladeshi rural society. Statistical tables and methodological discussions are collected in the Appendix, leaving a main text that can be fully enjoyed even by readers with no statistics background. At the roots of this group-based lending approach is the vision and the determination of a Bangladeshi economics professor, Muhammad Yunus, who, over more than 20 years, has initiated and continuously improved microlending to the poor through the Grameen Bank. The story of Yunus' remarkable life is told in "Banker to the Poor: Microlending and the Battle against World Poverty" by Muhammad Yunus and Alan Jolis, from his childhood in Bangladesh and his student years in the U.S. to his return to Bangladesh and the subsequent Grameen initiative. Both books are fundamental reading for those of us who keep looking for encouraging signs in poor countries' development.