Mark M. Pitt, Shahidur R. Khandker
This article examines the effect of group-based credit used to finance self-employment by landless households in Bangladesh on the seasonal pattern of household consumption and male and female labour supply. This credit can help smooth seasonal consumption by financing new productive activities whos...
Mark M. Pitt, Shahidur R. Khandker, Jennifer Cartwright
This paper examines the effects of men's and women's participation in group-based micro-credit programs on a large set of qualitative responses to questions that characterize women's autonomy and gender relations within the household. The data come from a special survey carried out in rural Banglade...
Shahidur R. Khandker, Gayatri Koolwal
Abstract Improving agricultural productivity has received a greater attention in recent years amid concerns about rising food insecurity, population pressures, and climate change. Many believe that better access to institutional credit, spanning microcredit as well as commercial and agricultural ban...
Shahidur R. Khandker
Mohammed Asaduzzaman, Hussain A. Samad, Mohammad Yunus, Shahidur R. Khandker
The Government of Bangladesh, with help from the World Bank and other donors, has provided aid to a local agency called Infrastructure Development Company Limited and its partner organizations to devise a credit scheme for marketing solar home system units and making these an affordable alternative ...
Omar Haider Chowdhury, Shahidur R. Khandker, Daniel L. Millimet, Mark M. Pitt
The impact of participation in group-based credit programs, by gender of participant, on the health status of children by gender in rural Bangladesh is investigated. These credit programs are well suited to studies of how gender-specific resources alter intra-household allocations because they induc...
Shahidur R. Khandker
Abstract The article examines the coping strategies that rural households adopted during the 1998 flood in Bangladesh and assesses its impact on household welfare, including coping and vulnerability. Both vulnerability and poverty have in general declined in Bangladesh. Yet, 60% of rural households ...
Shahidur R. Khandker
Microfinance supports mainly informal activities that often have a low return and low market demand. It may therefore be hypothesized that the aggregate poverty impact of microfinance is modest or even nonexistent. If true, the poverty impact of microfinance observed at the participant level represe...
Shahidur R. Khandker
Grameen Bank of Bangladesh is known worldwide for its innovative credit delivery to the rural poor. By incorporating group-based lending, mandatory savings and insurance, repayment rescheduling in case of disasters, and similar other schemes, it has been able to minimize both behavioral and material...
Shahidur R. Khandker, Gayatri Koolwal
The mechanisms by which the poor benefit from economic growth remain a topic of debate in development literature. We address this issue in the context of rural Bangladesh, using a pooled dataset of three household panels between 1991-2001. Expansion of irrigation, paved roads, electricity, and acces...
Shahidur R. Khandker, Hussain A. Samad
This paper uses long panel survey data spanning over 20 years to examine the dynamics of microcredit programs in Bangladesh. With the phenomenal growth of microfinance institutions representing 30 million members with over $2 billion of annual disbursement over the past two decades, it is important ...
Zaid Bakht, Shahidur R. Khandker, Gayatri B. Koolwal
"The rationale for public investment in rural roads is that households can better exploit agricultural and nonagricultural opportunities to use labor and capital more efficiently. But significant knowledge gaps remain as to how opportunities provided by roads actually filter back into household outc...
Mark M. Pitt, Shahidur R. Khandker, Jennifer Cartwright
This paper examines the effects of \n men's and women's participation in group-based \n micro-credit programs on a large set of qualitative \n responses to questions that characterize women's \n autonomy and gender relations within the household. The data \n come from a special s...
Shahidur R. Khandker, B. Gayatri Koolwal
Infrastructure investments are typically long-term. As a result, observed benefits to households and communities may vary considerably over time as short-term outcomes generate or are subsumed by longer-term impacts. This paper uses a new round of household survey as part of a local government engin...
Shahidur R. Khandker, Hussain A. Samad, Zubair K.M. Sadeque, Mohammed Asaduzzaman et al.
Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in raising living standards and reducing poverty, particularly in previously lagging regions. Rapid solar home system (SHS) expansion in Bangladesh to some 3 million rural households by early 2014 has drawn the attention of donors and governments of other coun...