 Can microcredit reduce vulnerability to poverty? Evidence from rural VietnamChung Thanh Phan, Thang Tat Vo and Diem Thi Hong Vo Review of Development Economics, 2023, vol. 27, issue 1, 608-629 Abstract: Extant literature has extensively explored microcredit's impacts, confirming its essential role in poverty alleviation. However, most studies focus on poverty measures that exclusively emphasize current poverty status without adequately addressing the potential of falling into or remaining in poverty. Furthermore, the role of credit services in helping the poor in rural areas appears to be underexamined in the literature. To address this knowledge gap, this study investigates whether rural microcredit can reduce household vulnerability to poverty. A theoretical framework is developed to capture the mechanism by which microcredit borrowing has a vital role in household businesses and impacts the probability of being poor in the future. The Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey data set from 2008 to 2016 is used to explore this issue. The findings indicate that rural Vietnam's access to microcredit significantly reduces vulnerability to poverty. Moreover, better‐off households are seemingly the most effective at using microcredit, whereas the opposite is found among worse‐off households. These results are found to be robust using the propensity score matching method. Date: 2023 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:rdevec:v:27:y:2023:i:1:p:608-629 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Review of Development Economics is currently edited by E. Kwan Choi More articles in Review of Development Economics from Wiley Blackwell |
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