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. 2017 Mar 21;114(12):3079-3084.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1611520114. Epub 2017 Mar 7.

Impact of savings groups on the lives of the poor

Dean Karlan  1   2 , Beniamino Savonitto  2 , Bram Thuysbaert  2   3 , Christopher Udry  4
Affiliations

Impact of savings groups on the lives of the poor

Dean Karlan et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Savings-led microfinance programs operate in poor rural communities in developing countries to establish groups that save and then lend out the accumulated savings to each other. Nonprofit organizations train villagers to create and lead these groups. In a clustered randomized evaluation spanning three African countries (Ghana, Malawi, and Uganda), we find that the promotion of these community-based microfinance groups leads to an improvement in household business outcomes and women's empowerment. However, we do not find evidence of impacts on average consumption or other livelihoods.

Keywords: empowerment; microfinance; resilience; rural development; savings.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Program uptake. Percentage of female primary respondents joining a VSLA in the study sample in treatment (solid lines) and control (dotted lines) clusters. GH, Ghana; MW, Malawi; UG, Uganda.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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