“Does Microcredit Increase Child Labour in Absence of Microinsurance?” by Sayan Chakrabarty; published by the Microinsurance Innovation Facility, European Development Network and International Labour Office; February 2012; 35 pages; available at:
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/mifacility/download/repaper12.pdf
This publication discusses the results of a study exploring whether access to microinsurance reduces entrepreneurs’ use of child labor. The study divided households with at least one child into three groups: microcredit participants with microinsurance, microcredit participants with no microinsurance and participants with an informal (non-microcredit) loan and no microinsurance. The researchers found that having both microcredit and microinsurance reduced the amount of child labor in “extremely” poor households. In “moderately” poor households, microcredit increased child labor usage, and in households above the poverty line there was no effect. The author concludes that policy-makers should consider providing adequate microcredit to extremely poor households along with microinsurance to protect against the opportunity cost of using child labor.
“A Simple Poverty Scorecard for Benin,” by Mark Schreiner, published by Microfinance.com, April 2012, 126 pages, available at: http://www.microfinance.com/English/Papers/Scoring_Poverty_Benin_EN_2010.pdf
This document reveals a scorecard based on Benin’s 2010 Integrated Household Living Standards Survey that estimates the probability that a household has total expenditure below a given poverty line. The scorecard uses the following ten indicators: geographical region; material of the exterior walls of the home; number of household members; literacy in French of the female head of household; main source of energy for lighting; number of rooms used for sleeping; main cooking fuel used; whether the household has a motorcycle, scooter or automobile; number of mobile telephones; and if the household owned or rented sub-divided, developed or irrigated land in the past year. The author contends that the scorecard is a practical way for operators to measure and track changes in poverty rates over time.
“Are Non-Microenterprise Loans Less Resilient to Domestic Shocks? Lessons from the 2009 Economic Recession,” by Adrian Gonzalez, published by Microfinance Information Exchange, March 2012, 7 pages, available at: http://www.themix.org/sites/default/files/MBB-Formalization%20Paper.pdf
This report considers how the level of integration of microfinance loan portfolios with domestic economies affects the change in quality of the portfolios during an economic recession. The level of integration of the portfolios in the study varied in two ways: (1) a decreasing share of loans to microenterprises and (2) expanding microcredit in economies with a high percentage of salaried workers and a low percentage of microentrepreneurs. The study found that the microcredit sector was less strong during the economic recession of 2009 compared to other years. The author attributes this to an increase in the share of non-microenterprise lending together with an expansion of microcredit in countries with more “formal” economies, which the study shows are less resilient to recession.
By Charlotte Newman, Research Associate
Sources and Additional Resources:
“Does Microcredit Increase Child Labour in Absence of Microinsurance?” http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/mifacility/download/repaper12.pdf
“A Simple Poverty Scorecard for Benin,” http://www.microfinance.com/English/Papers/Scoring_Poverty_Benin_EN_2010.pdf
“Are Non-Microenterprise Loans Less Resilient to Domestic Shocks? Lessons from the 2009 Economic Recession,” http://www.themix.org/sites/default/files/MBB-Formalization%20Paper.pdf
MicroCapital.org story, April 6, 2012, “MICROFINANCE PUBLICATION ROUND-UP: Microinsurance Donor Trends; Health Insurance Participation in Kenya; Risk Preference and Demand for Insurance Under Price Uncertainty in Cote d’Ivoire,” https://www.microcapital.org/microfinance-publication-round-up-microinsurance-donor-trends-health-insurance-participation-in-kenya-risk-preference-and-demand-for-insurance-under-price-uncertainty-in-cote-divoire/
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