Microfinance Growth and Poverty Reduction in Bangladesh: What Does the Longitudinal Data Say?

This paper, using several data sets, investigates whether microcredit programmes, which have been operating in rural Bangladesh for over 20 years, have any long-term effects in improving household income and expenditure and lowering poverty. Both descriptive and econometric analyses show that microcredit programmes helped participants earn higher income, consume more, and thereby lifted many of them out of poverty. Findings also suggest that while participation matters, those who have been with the programmes continuously for the last 20 years do even better. The paper concludes that poverty reduction, in particular the reduction of extreme poverty, due to microcredit intervention can be as high as 9 per cent of the total poverty reduction over the last decade in Bangladesh.