Reducing Vulnerability through Microfinance: Evidence from Indian Self Help Group Program

Ranjula Bali Swain and Maria Floro ()
Additional contact information
Maria Floro: Department of Economics, American University, Postal: 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington DC 20016,

No 2010:23, Working Paper Series from Uppsala University, Department of Economics

Abstract: We investigate if participation in Indian Self Help Group microfinance program (SHG) results in reducing vulnerability. Vulnerability estimates are constructed using cross-sectional SHG rural household survey data, collected in 2003. The potential selection bias is eliminated by propensity score matching to estimate the average treatment on treated effect using nearest neighbour matching and local linear regression algorithm. We find that despite a disproportionately high percentage of poor in the SHG members, vulnerability is not significantly different between the SHG and non-SHG members. This result is found to be robust using sensitivity analysis and Rosenbaum bounds method.

Keywords: Microfinance; Vulnerability; Poverty; Self Help Groups (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D14 G21 I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2010-12-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mfd and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:380292/FULLTEXT01.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:uunewp:2010_023

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Uppsala University, Department of Economics Department of Economics, Uppsala University, P. O. Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ulrika Öjdeby ().