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Microfinance Faces Uncertainty in Bangladesh
The Bangladesh government should reevaluate its pursuit to regulate and nationalize the operations of the Grameen Bank.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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‘Maybe It’s Time We Start Behaving Like a Business’: The struggle of one microfinance institution to balance its social impact with its bottom line
La Ceiba designed its microfinance programs and policies around the needs and capabilities of its clients - even when this conflicted with the best interest of the institution. But now, its interest income isn’t covering its loan loss, putting its survival in doubt. La Ceiba’s loan program leader offers a frank assessment of its struggle to balance social impact with business needs.
- Categories
- Environment, Impact Assessment
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“Correlation is not causation”: Roodman takes issue with World Bank study
The issue is standard. Correlation is not causation. The Economist makes a strikingly confident statement about how one thing affects another. The problem is that in families and villages, everything affects everything. Taking more microloans can make people wealthier or poorer. Being wealthier or poorer can make people take more microloans. The arrows go in circles. Statistics can measure correlations. How do we make the leap to causation?
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment
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MasterCard funding Grameen Foundation initiative to bring financial services to the unbanked in Kenya
MasterCard is funding a Grameen Foundation initiative to bring financial services to the poor and the unbanked in Kenya.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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Rehabilitation and attack: microcredit helps the poor after all
FOR years the reputation of microfinance—which gives tiny loans to the poorest—rose and fell in tandem with relations between Grameen Bank and the Bangladeshi government. In 2006 the bank and its head, Muhammad Yunus, won the Nobel peace prize for reducing poverty and Mr Yunus toyed with setting up a political party, supposedly with the government’s blessing. Since then several studies have found limited or no benefits from microfinance, and in 2011 (for different reasons) a new government forced Mr Yunus to resign from the bank he had founded.
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- Uncategorized
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Here’s How You Help the Poor Without Soaking the Rich
We have to clear our minds of a fallacy about poverty alleviation: Helping the poor does not mean welfare. This isn’t to say that we don’t need welfare. Ignoring the unfortunate who can’t put enough food on the table or afford proper education or healthcare is not just cruel, it’s bad economics.
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Opinion: Can science eliminate extreme poverty?
There is always hope that scientific innovations will help solve global problems. So can scientists help solve the globe’s ultimate problem: eliminate extreme poverty?
- Categories
- Technology
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‘Lean So Far Into It That You’re At Risk’: … and 20 other quotable quotes from the Global Health & Innovation Conference
The Global Health & Innovation Conference, held over two days on the Yale University campus, provides an opportunity for some of the most innovative thinkers in health care around the world to exchange ideas.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care
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