Mikrofinanzierung: Motor für Beschäftigung oder Ersatz für soziale Sicherungsnetze?

Abstract

What can microfinance contribute to the creation of employment and the increase in well-being of the population? We argue that microfinance has an important benefit for the poor, particularly for subsistence entrepreneurs, as a means of handling shocks and smoothing income. By helping to assure a minimum standard of living on the subsistence level, microfinance partly assumes the functions that in developed economies are provided by social safety nets. A microfinance initiated large scale transformation of poor people into successful entrepreneurs creating small or even medium sized enterprises, however, is not likely to take place, neither in developing nor in industrialised economies. To foster entrepreneurship and to bridge the gap between subsistence activities and prospering enterprise-a gap which is particularly prominent in developing countries due to the high share of the informal economy-microfinance is only part of the solution. Improving the business environment, facilitating the formalisation of unregistered enterprise, and, last but not least, access to better education and vocational training are of equal importance to spur firms' growth and employment creation.