Microfinance and Gender: Poverty Assessment of Beneficiaries in Mali

Abstract

The evaluation of the poverty of beneficiaries is a topic rarely raised as is the impact of microfinance. The different results across studies and contexts are based on methodologies and different technical analyses. Our study contributes to the debate from survey data collected in Mali in 2007 regarding the beneficiaries of microfinance services. The paper adopts the methodology of identifying the poor based on the micro-multidimensional measure of poverty developed by Chakravarty, Mukherjee and Ranade (1998). Overall, this approach has found a supremacy of the incidence of non-monetary poverty by gender but not significantly (η=- 0.322) higher among women members (0.444) than male recipients (0.437). Differences in poverty are not significant for new members. For long date recipients, women have a poverty incidence significantly higher than men in urban areas (η=- 2.081) and in rural areas (η=- 1.797). These differences are due to lack of educational capability in urban areas and housing and durable goods for rural people.