Social Impact Assessment of Microfinance Programmes - weman

orrowers spend less on education by almost Rs.100 compared to pipeline clients.
Furthermore, the percentage of children enrolled in schools especially girls of active
borrowers are on average less than that of pipeline clients (-11,3; p=0.035, Girls’
Enrolment -11.95; p=0.038). These are comparable to the survey results discussed in the
last section.
Table 3.7: Regression Results for Asasah
Single Difference Double Difference
Dependent Variable
Coefficient t-value 1 Coefficient t-value
Log(Respondent Income) 0.07 1.16 0.15 1.41
Log(Household Income) -0.012 -0.31 0.047 0.77
Log(Per Capita Income) 0.018 0.36 0.063 0.81
Log(Total Household Expenditure) 0.002 0.95 0.021 0.37
Log(Food Expenditure) 0.033 0.66 0.019 0.25
Educational Expenditure -97.28 -2.23 ** 75.72 1.12
Health Expenditure 47.22 1.90 * 2.7 0.05
Savings -161 -1.61 -268 -1.88 *
Cumulative Asset Value -24830 -0.69 -25852 -0.66
Children Enrolled in School(%) -11.3 -2.11 ** 1.08 0.13
Boys Enrolled in School(%) -7.98 -1.52 6.86 0.87
Girls Enrolled in School(%) -11.95 -2.09 ** -6.5 -0.73
Women's Empowerment (Overall Index) 2 -0.46 -0.51 4.7 2.92 ***
Economic Empowerment 0.34 0.92 1.31 2.27 **
Income Empowerment 0.12 0.66 0.22 0.71
Asset Empowerment -0.17 -0.90 0.46 1.75 *
Empowerment related with Education and
Health 0.15 0.53 2.38 4.82 ***
Social Empowerment -0.89 -4.51 *** 0.35 0.96
1 Significant at 10%(*), Significant at 5%(**), Significant at 1% (***)
2 Score based on 47 questions, the other idices listed below are a breakdown of this index. Refer to
questionnaire for detail.
Health Expenditure is also significant in the Single Difference estimation and shows that
microfinance has had a positive impact for active borrowers (47.22, p=0.10). On further
analysis of the data we find that pipeline clients are spending the least amount on health
when compared to other respondents.
In the DID regression, the member dummy was significant for all measures of income
and for total expenditure, implying that the unobservable factors such as entrepreneurship
has a positive impact on the above mentioned outcomes over and above that of access to
microfinance. One of the variables controlled for in the regressions was the number of
earners in the household and that was significant in 8 out of the 18 DID regressions. It
was positively associated with household income, per capita income, total expenditure,
food, asset value, and some of the empowerment indices. Another variable controlled was
the gender of the household head with a dummy, which took a value of one for female
headed households. This was significant and negatively associated with the income and
expenditure measures implying that female headed households are poorer; however, it
was significant and positively associated with most of the empowerment indices meaning
that they were more liberal as it would be expected.
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