IMPACT OF MICROCREDIT ON INCOME GENERATION FOR POVERTY ALLEVIATION AND EMPOWERMENT OF RURAL WOMEN: A STUDY IN SOME SELECTED AREAS OF MEHERPUR DISTRICT

Abstract

The present study was designed to evaluate impact of microcredit on income generation for poverty alleviation and empowerment of rural women. The study is based on data generated through face to face interviews of selected women borrowers numbering 90 under three microcredit organization such as ASA, BRAC and DBS programming areas of Meherpur district. In this study descriptive analysis was used to identify the socio- economic conditions of women and to measure the women empowerment through microcredit programs. Logistic regression analysis used to assess the impact of microcredit programs on income generation for poverty alleviation of women at household level. The socio-economic conditions of women are essential to assess the effectiveness of microcredit programs. The univariate technique is used first to study the variation of poverty alleviation on several covariates. The multivariate technique viz., multiple logistic regression model is used to identify the determinants of income generation for poverty alleviation. The finding of the analysis shows that, the total household members were negatively influencing the poverty alleviation of women at household level whereas household earning members have positive impact on income generation which leads to poverty alleviation, the reason behind this is earning members are more than one to, increase the level of income of the household and then they live in better life and their poverty also reduced. So, household‘s monthly income also positively affect on income generation for poverty alleviation. Respondent‘s education, occupation, amount of loan and savings have also positive impact on the poverty alleviation of women at household level. The microcredit programs on empowerment of women have been measured by ten household decision making factors of women. The empowerment index reflects that employed women get more empowerment facilities than the unemployed women and most of the women were housewife mainly. The empowerment index shows that the empowerment index for employed women is 0.77 and for unemployed women 0.28 whereas the average empowerment index for all respondents is 0.53. Women who were employed enable to take more decisions than their husband due to associated with the microcredit organizations.