HIV medical care, including antiretroviral therapy (ART), is often successful in restoring physical health and functioning. But in developing countries, HIV medical care is often insufficient to achieve social and economic health, and hence innovative economic support programs are much needed. We conducted semistructured interviews with 30 adults receiving ART and microcredit loans operated by ...

Microcredit typically refers to petty collateral-free credits given to groups of poor members in the society for their socioeconomic emancipation. It is claimed to be an effective tool for enhancing income of the poor primarily through creation of selfemployment opportunities for them in a variety of small economic activities. However, in this survey of microcredit borrowers in Bangladesh it is...

We replicate and reanalyse the most influential study of microcredit impacts (Pitt and Khandker, 1998). That study was celebrated for showing that microcredit reduces poverty, a much hoped-for possibility (though one not confirmed by recent randomized controlled trials). We show that the original results on poverty reduction disappear after dropping outliers, or when using a robust linear estim...

BACKGROUND Poverty, lack of female empowerment, and lack of education are major risk factors for childhood illness worldwide. Microcredit programs, by offering small loans to poor individuals, attempt to address the first two of these risk factors, poverty and gender disparity. They provide clients, usually women, with a means to invest in their businesses and support their families. This study...

Microcredit is advocated as a development tool that has the potential to reduce poverty, empower participants, and improve health. Results of several studies have shown that the extreme poor, or the ultra-poor, often are unable to benefit from traditional microcredit programmes and can, as a result of taking a loan they cannot repay, sink deeper into economic and social poverty. This case study...

Correction After publication of our article Pérez et al Int J Equity Health 2012 11:43, we became aware of some errors in the final published version, for which the corresponding author accepts full responsibility. Page 3: third paragraph, Lines 2–4: “. . ., microcredit, and technical training for those ages 15 to 30” should be read “. . ., microcredit for those ages 15 to 65, and technical tra...

This paper explores the relationship between microcredit and poverty reduction. To investigate this question, we posit a bare-bone, household model that outlines the economic environment within which various types of family microenterprises operate. It highlights a number of issues that impinge on household earnings such as the nature of the labour market, technology, product demand and entrepr...

The reason for choosing microfinance for the poorest proceeds from a great need for financial and educational support of the poorest in Russia. During the last ten years, numerous programs have been elaborated and implemented in order to support small business in particular. Nevertheless, the poorest, as a less appealing sector for investing money in comparison to small business, still remains ...

Answering surveys is usually voluntary, yet much of our knowledge depends on the willingness of households and institutions to answer. We explore the implications of voluntary reporting on knowledge about microfinance. We show systematic biases in microfinance institutions’ choices about which survey to respond to and which specific indicators to report. The analysis focuses on data for 2,072 m...

Microcredit institutions spend billions of dollars fighting poverty by making small loans primarily to female entrepreneurs. Proponents argue that microcredit mitigates market failures, spurs micro-enterprise growth, and boosts borrowers' well-being. We tested these hypotheses with the use of an innovative, replicable experimental design that randomly assigned individual liability microloans (o...