[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/inq/inqwps/ecineq2010-173.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The controversial effects of microfinance on child schooling: A retrospective approach

Author

Listed:
  • Leonardo Becchetti

    (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”)

  • Pierluigi Conzo

    (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”)

Abstract
Two crucial problems when research agencies or donors need to asses empirically the microfinance/children education nexus on already operating organizations are lack of availability of panel data and selection bias. We propose an original approach which tackles these problems by combining retrospective panel data, fixed effects and comparison between pre and post-treatment trends. The relative advantage of our approach vis-à-vis standard cross-sectional estimates (and even panels with just two observations repeated in time) is that it allows to analyse the progressive effects of microfinance on borrowers. With this respect our paper gives an answer to the widespread demand of impact methodologies required by regulators or by funding agencies which need to evaluate the current and past performance of existing institutions. We apply our approach to a sample of microfinance borrowers coming from two districts of Buenos Aires with different average income levels. By controlling for survivorship bias and heterogeneity in time invariant and time varying characteristics of respondents we find that years of credit history have a positive and significant effect on child schooling conditional to the borrower’s standard of living and distance from school.

Suggested Citation

  • Leonardo Becchetti & Pierluigi Conzo, 2010. "The controversial effects of microfinance on child schooling: A retrospective approach," Working Papers 173, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    • Handle: RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2010-173
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ecineq.org/milano/WP/ECINEQ2010-173.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nargiza Alimukhamedova & Randall Filer & Jan Hanousek, 2015. "The Importance of Geographic Access for the Impact of Microfinance," CESifo Working Paper Series 5433, CESifo.
    2. Emerson, Patrick M. & McGough, Bruce, 2010. "Are Microloans Bad for Growth?," IZA Discussion Papers 5249, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Marcella Corsi & Marina De Angelis & Pierluigi Montalbano, 2013. "The Gender Impact of Microfinance: The Case of Wekembe in Uganda," Working Papers CEB 13-045, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    child schooling; microfinance; retrospective data; impact evaluation.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • G20 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - General
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O16 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • O54 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Latin America; Caribbean

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2010-173. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Maria Ana Lugo (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecineea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.