Fighting poverty with microcredit : experience in Bangladesh

Providing microcredit to the poor has become an important antipoverty scheme in many countries. Microcredit helps the poor become self-employed and thus generates income and reduces poverty. In Bangladesh, these programs reach about 5 million poor households. This books attempts to find out whether these programs cost-effective, drawing on the experiences of the well-known microcredit programs of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank, the Rural Development-12 projects, and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee. It examines the cost-effectiveness of microcredit programs vis-�vis other antipoverty programs, such as Food-for-Work. Moreover, the book uses extensive household survey data to address how the gender of participants affects the impact of microcredit programs.