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Abstract
"This paper analyses the impact of three credit programmes--the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), the Bangladesh Rural Development Board's Rural Development-12 (BRDB RD-12), and the Grameen Bank (GB), on current rate of contraception. These programmes are targeted to alleviate poverty by providing group-based credit to the rural poor in creating self employment opportunities. With small credits, these programmes combine family planning activities in terms of consciousness raising, awareness building and motivation. Sample survey data are used to analyse the problem of impact evaluation. The analyses show that the BRAC and the GB programmes have [a] significantly positive impact on the current rate of contraception, while the BRDB RD-12 programme does not have any such impact. It is also found that education, both of female[s] and male[s] separately, and child survivorship have independently positive impact[s] on current contraception."
... However, it is now experiencing a decreasing trend in the fertility rate. The estimated total fertility rate declined from nearly seven in the late 1970s to five during 1986-88 and to 4.9 in 1989 (Latif, 1994;Mahmud, 1991). The rising trends in age at marriage and the use of contraceptives have mainly affected the fertility rate. ...
... Studies by find that GB's credit programme has a positive effect on contraceptive use among both participants and nonparticipants in GB villages, i.e. the presence of GB in a village has a dramatic effect on it, however, participation in BRAC does not affect contraceptive use. Another study by Latif (1994) find that both GB and BRAC have significantly positive impact on the current rate of contraception. This research does not confirm Schuler and Hashemi's study, rather it confirms Latif s study. ...
... It has been claimed that the credit schemes of GB and BRAC reduce poverty and empower women (Schuler and Hashemi, 1997Hashemi and Morshed, 1997;Haque, 1997;Pitt andKhandker, 1996;BRAC, 1996BRAC, , 1994BRAC, and 1993Todd, 1996;Holcombe, 1995;Mizan, 1994;Latif, 1994;Lovell, 1992;Rahman, 1990). ...
This research assesses the impact of micro-finance in changing gender relations through empowering women with particular reference to Bangladesh. The thesis begins with a theoretical review from which a conceptual framework is developed to analyse the effects of micro-finance. Subsequently, an overview of socio-economic background of Bangladesh and a commentary on the micro-finance institutions (MFIs) researched, the Grameen Bank (GB) and BRAC is presented. Chapter three explores key methodological issues and describes the fieldwork which focused on three villages in Bangladesh. Chapter four examines the characteristics of the survey sample and also presents six detailed qualitative case studies. Chapter five to eight present the empirical findings of the research with the impact of credit assessed in terms of women’s economic, social, political and psychological empowerment. The conclusion presents the key findings and explores their policy implications.
Credit schemes run by MFIs have become popular in Bangladesh since the 1980s. They provide poor rural women with access to credit in an attempt to reduce poverty and empower women. The Grameen Bank and BRAC and various independent studies claim that through credit investments women earn income which reduces their poverty and empowers them. However, other studies argue that credit schemes have a limited impact in reducing poverty and empowering women and sometimes may have negative impacts. The present research is a contribution to this debate. The concept of women’s empowerment was adopted as the main perspective for assessing impact. Empirical data was collected through an integrated methodology of participant observation, sample survey and detailed case studies of individual women borrowers and dropouts of GB and BRAC and of non-borrowers. The analysis of the data reveal worrying findings: that in most cases credit is not creating a ‘virtuous circle’ to break the ‘vicious circle’ of poverty and that rarely empowers women. Only in a few cases, and to a limited extent, does credit reduce rural women’s poverty and in many cases it has a ratchet effect and drives households (and the women in them) into deeper poverty. Evidence suggests that credit alone cannot reduce gender inequality and that in some cases it has a reverse effect, reinforcing existing gender differences and inequalities. Reversing the vicious circle of poverty through an expanding system of micro-finance is not as simple or direct as is claimed by the MFIs. The findings also indicate that credit has differential impacts on different women and that the MFIs usually fail to recognize this. Despite numerous poverty reduction initiatives, the very poor in Bangladesh face self, peer-group, social, household and organizational exclusion.
Women’s empowerment is a long-term process and credit alone, in most cases is unlikely to dramatically improve the position of rural women in Bangladesh. Unequal gender relations are deeply embedded in contemporary Bangladeshi society, so credit with a ‘minimalist’ approach can only reduce gender inequalities to a limited degree. In terms of policy, the ‘minimalist’ and the ‘credit plus’ approaches are unlikely to attain the objectives of women’s empowerment and poverty reduction. A ‘credit with social development’ approach is more likely to achieve such grand objectives.
... Implementing educational initiatives at the local level has the potential to educate residents and change community norms regarding family planning, which could have a positive impact on fertility reduction. By increasing awareness and access to services, increased education can enhance contraceptive use, thereby contributing to fertility reduction [64]. Policymakers may choose to intervene in areas with low literacy and low contraceptive uptake in order to reduce fertility [50]. ...
Number of children ever born to women of reproductive age forms a core component of fertility and is vital to the population dynamics in any country. Using Bangladesh Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2019 data, we fitted a novel weighted Bayesian Poisson regression model to identify multi-level individual, household, regional and societal factors of the number of children ever born among married women of reproductive age in Bangladesh. We explored the robustness of our results using multiple prior distributions, and presented the Metropolis algorithm for posterior realizations. The method is compared with regular Bayesian Poisson regression model using a Weighted Bayesian Information Criterion. Factors identified emphasize the need to revisit and strengthen the existing fertility-reduction programs and policies in Bangladesh.
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s44199-022-00044-2.
... Micro-credit programs to women also raise their prestige and status in the eyes of their husbands and of their local community (Bayes, 2005). A lot of research studies claimed that the micro-credit schemes of different banks, NGOs and other organizations reduced poverty, increased mobility and strengthened networks among women who were previously confined to their homes (Pitt and Khandker, 1996;Latif 1994;Rahman, 1990). In Pakistan, microfinance is gaining importance as an effective tool to social mobilization and poverty alleviation. ...
World over, the pursuit of rural development has taken the direction of enhancing the agricultural productivity. But the role of these women in impeded because they are usually marginalized and hold a low status in many developing countries. In the history of development process, development practitioners have tried to identify strategies that could promote the level of women participation in the race of development. Among various interventions, micro-finance lending has been identified as a powerful tool to improve the women’s socio-economic levels of development. The present study was conducted to explore on much debated question of the role of micro finance as a financial intermediary for enhancing the socio-economic development of women. A primary survey was carried out to capture the realistic experiences and observation from the beneficiaries of micro finance institutions of AKRSP in Northern Areas of Pakistan. The empirical findings of the study suggest that microfinance has a profound influence on the socio-economic status, decision making power, knowledge and self-worthiness of women beneficiaries.
Analyzing Role of Micro Credit Towards Socio-economic Development of Rural Women in Northern Areas of
Pakistan
... Various studies claimed that the credit schemes of Grameen Bank (GB) and BRAC reduce poverty and empower women (Schuler and Hashemi, 1997 Morshed, 1997; Haque, 1997;Pitt and Khandker, 1996;BRAC, 1996BRAC, , 1994BRAC, and 1993Todd, 1996;Holcombe, 1995;Mizan, 1994;Latif, 1994;Lovell, 1992;Rahman, 1990). ...
Gender relations are deeply embedded in the Bangladeshi society. Therefore, changing gender relations is difficult and requires a long-term process. Empowerment of women, as a framework indicator for assessing gender empowerment, impact of credit, may be an ideal one as a theoretical yardstick. However, there has been an exaggeration of gender empowerment impact of credit. In practice credit provision is a step on the long road of empowering poor rural women. The credit schemes of the Micro Finance Institutions (MFls) are not a panacea to women's empowerment in Bangladesh. MFIs alone cannot bring the required change in the society to empower women, rather all other sectors including GOs and NGOs have to bring changes in all their policies to create a suitable enabling environment to reverse the age old gender related societal systems.
... Micro-credit programs to women also raise their prestige and status in the eyes of their husbands and of their local community (Bayes, 2005). A lot of research studies claimed that the micro-credit schemes of different banks, NGOs and other organizations reduced poverty, increased mobility and strengthened networks among women who were previously confined to their homes (Pitt and Khandker, 1996;Latif 1994;Rahman, 1990). In Pakistan, microfinance is gaining importance as an effective tool to social mobilization and poverty alleviation. ...
... Micro-credit programmes to women also raise their prestige and status in the eyes of their husbands and of their local community (Bayes, 2005). A lot of research studies claimed that the micro-credit schemes of different banks, NGOs and other organizations reduced poverty, increased mobility and strengthened networks among women who were previously confined to their homes (Schuler and Hashemi, 1997;Hashemi and Morshed, 1997;Chowdhury and Alam, 1997;Carr et al., 1996;Hulme and Mosley, 1996;Pitt and Khandker, 1996;Latif, 1994;Lovell, 1992;Rahman, 1990). These research studies emphasized the effectiveness of credit as a tool for poverty reduction and women's empowerment. ...
Approximately 60% of the clients of micro-finance institutions throughout the world are women. Basically three arguments are used to prioritize women's access to micro-finance services: one is poverty, second is increased efficiency and sustainability and third is equality in empowerment. Empowerment is a process of change by which individuals or groups gain power and ability to take control over their lives. It involves increased well being, access to resources, self-confidence, self-esteem and respect, participation in decision-making and bargaining power, and increased control over benefits and their own life. Micro-credit programmes tend to focus on promoting changes at the individual level. However the scope of empowerment for individual women is usually limited by inequalities and discrimination. It was concluded by keeping in view the previous studies that micro credit schemes no doubt facilitate in empowering poor women and eradicates poverty but it also had some negative impact on women's empowerment.
... 5 'These findings suggest that the social implications of microcredit lending can be as powerful as the economic implications' (Larance, 2001, p. 16). Latif (1994) and Schuler and Hashemi (1994) find that Grameen, while not supplying family-planning services, increases the use of contraception, perhaps because members vow to keep their families small. Still, these studies probably overstate impact, as they do not control for non-random branch placement nor for member selfselection. ...
Reports of the success of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh have led to rapid growth in funding for microfinance. But has the Grameen Bank been cost-effective? This article compares output with subsidy for the bank in a present-value framework. For the timeframe 1983-97, subsidy per person-year of membership in Grameen was about $20, and subsidy per dollar-year borrowed was about $0.22. Although the article does not measure consumer surplus for Grameen users, the evidence in the literature suggests that surplus probably exceeds subsidy. The Grameen Bank - if not necessarily other microlenders - was probably a worthwhile social investment. Copyright Overseas Development Institute, 2003.
Micro-credit institutes (MFIs) piovide credit to the rural poor women and claim that
through 'virtuous circle' credit is able to break the 'vicious circle' of poverly and the
result is women's empowerment. These micro-finance narratives about poverty
reduction and women's empovl'erment are mainly based on only the success stories and
the other stories of the unsuccessful women are always excluded. This paper
contradicts these micro-finance narratives and shows that credit alone can not empower
women, rather disempowers them very often.
Exploitation is pervasive in society. Some forms of it are harmless, or at least morally neutral, and permissible. Other forms of exploitation are wrong and impermissible; and others wrong but permissible, all things considered. Exploitation is wrong but permissible when the total benefits derived from allowing wrongly exploitative transactions to continue are deemed to exceed the costs of the wrongful exploitation. To consider whether exploitation is ever permissible in microcredit, we need first to distinguish what makes some exploitation morally neutral and some wrong, and then consider, if microcredit does indeed exploit, how it does so and whether it does so wrongly. Even if we conclude – as I shall argue – that microcredit does wrongly exploit, we must still ask whether that is permissible, all things considered. If, for example, microcredit can be shown to succeed in its stated goals of enriching and empowering tens of millions of the world's poorest women, some wrongful exploitation along the way might be outweighed. The final section of this chapter will sum up the current evidence as to whether microcredit does indeed, overall, enrich and empower its clients – and it will find that other than for a tiny percentage, it does not. So, a possible justification for wrongful exploitation in microcredit fails, leaving a clear moral need for some practitioners, if they continue to extend microcredit at all, to change the ways in which they do so. Distinguishing wrongful from morally neutral exploitation In the broadest sense, exploitation is making use of, or turning to your advantage, someone, something, or a set of circumstances. It is distinguished from merely ‘making use’ of something by the fact that the exploiter manipulates or controls the object of exploitation in some way.
Frequent job changing or migration creates huge problems in production and management in the readymade garments sector of Bangladesh. Job changing or migration is very common character for professions but frequently change make the system interrupted. Garments workers change their jobs for higher salary, bad environment, transportation, housing and related others problems related with their working stations. From the research it was revealed that lots of job opportunities for the garments workers makes them easy to find out the better option, though their working environment almost same in everywhere excepting some special cases. Mainly the workers change their jobs for higher salaries, increasing house rent where the female for good environment, good communication and harassment free working condition. Three areas of Dhaka district have been selected for this study where two areas from Dhaka city and another one is outer side of Dhaka city. The comparative study has come here regarding their job change from city to outer city area. Workers job changing for higher salary and good environment is almost common to everywhere but for increasing house rent and communication, the workers of city area change their jobs normally.
Garments sector is the life blood of Banglades has the agricultural land has there been turned to a country of garments industries. Employment in the Ready-made garment sector in Bangladesh provides workers with economic benefits and some empowerment. More than 3.2 millions people are working in this sector and about 5000 garments factories are scattered across the country.78 per cent of our foreign earnings come from this sector. So it will not be an overstatement to say that, we earn our bread from garments industries. The study attempts to explore the present socio-economic status of the garments workers. The study based mainly on economic and social status of 100 garments workers from Rampura and Badda areas of Dhaka City. It was found that the socio-economic condition of the Garments workers is not in a lofty stage. Amongst the workers about 70 per cent are women, who work dawn to dusk even up to late night when their wages are not in the satisfactory level. They cannot afford their foods, cloths, housing, medicines, and educations of their wards as they are ill paid. On the contrary, their children are deprived from their care; they suffer from malnutrition and unhygienic complexities. They have no time or scope for recreation. During the study it was found that, worldwide economic meltdown has affected RMG sector of Bangladesh as some workers have lost their jobs and trend of works have been declined. At the end of the study, some recommendations were placed to improve the present conditions of the garments workers as well as garments sector of the country.
As Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen has argued ?[Bangladesh?s development achievements have] important lessons for other countries across the globe, [in particular a focus on] reducing gender inequality?. A major avenue through which this emphasis has been manifest lies, according to this narrative, in enhancements to women?s agency for instrumental and intrinsic reasons particularly through innovations in family planning and microfinance. The ?Bangladesh paradox? of improved wellbeing despite low economic growth over the last four decades is claimed as a paradigmatic case of the spread of both modern family planning programmes and microfinance leading to women?s empowerment and fertility reduction. In this paper we show that the links between microfinance, empowerment and fertility reduction, are fraught with problems, and far from robust; hence the claimed causal links between microfinance and family planning via women?s empowerment needs to be further reconsidered.
Thanks also to seminar participants at Brown University, Georgetown University, The World Bank, Mathematica, and Brandeis University. I am indebted to two anonymous referees whose comments have significantly improved the paper. Funding from the Hewlett and Mellon foundations is gratefully acknowledged. I am responsible for all errors that remain.
Microfinance (MF) and family planning (FP) are thought to be very important interventions in the promotion of human development and it has been suggested that MF has significant beneficent impacts on contraceptive adoption and fertility. Thus, several authors, e.g. Amin, Hill and Li (1995), Amin et al (1994 and 2001); Schuler, Hashemi and Riley (1997); Hashemi, Schuler and Riley (1996); Schuler and Hashemi (1994), using naive methods find that MF in Bangladesh increases contraceptive use and reduces fertility at the individual level, largely because MF empowers women. Pitt et al (1999) – henceforth PKML), however, using instrumental variables (IV) estimation find that MF is associated with decreases in contraceptive use especially when females borrow, and male borrowing decreases fertility, perhaps because fertility increasing income effects of MF outweigh substitution. Steele et al (2001), also using data from Bangladesh from around the same time as the PKML study, come to conclusions closer to the orthodoxy, arguing that PKML use an inappropriate metric for MF programme participation. In this paper we apply matching methods to our reconstruction of the PKML data to test whether other methods reproduce their results. We find that female borrowing substantially increases contraceptive use but has mainly no effects on fertility, while male borrowing has no effect on contraceptive use or on fertility; this contradicts some of the findings of PKML. Our results are shown to be vulnerable to unobservables, but there is no reason to believe that results on IV based methods are more reliable.
Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University, 2002. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [74]-76).
This study studies the benefits of membership in microfinance programmes, and examines whether membership in these programmes is an effective instrument in smoothing inter-seasonal consumption. We hypothesise that the benefits to participation accrue differentially over time, as more experienced participants are better equipped on their own to minimise per capita consumption fluctuations. Using an Euler equation approach, we show that consumption differentials across seasons are inversely related to length of membership. Estimates from the gender-stratified model suggest that for a female participant, 1 year of membership reduces the percentage change in per capita consumption, caused by a unit shock, by 6 per cent. We present simulation results confirming that as length of membership increases, the 'certainty equivalent' of the participant decreases. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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