Number of Microcredit Clients Crossing the US $1.25 a Day Threshold during 1990-2008 – Estimates from a Nationwide Survey in Bangladesh

This study estimates the net number of microcredit client households that crossed the US$1.25 a day threshold between 1990 and 2008 in Bangladesh.

The study aims to assist the Microcredit Summit Campaign in its goal of ensuring that 100 million families rise above the poverty threshold between 1990 and 2015. Findings include:

• Microcredit growth has been impressive since the 1990s;
• Growth rate in reported numbers of borrowers has been around 10% per annum for most major microcredit organizations for over a decade;
• Many of the ever borrower households (those who had ever taken a microloan) had migrated to urban areas, and microcredit is believed to have often facilitated this move to urban areas for better opportunities;
• Clients entering during 1994-1997 had the most reduction in poverty;
• 9.43 million people in ever borrowing households crossed the threshold during the study period on net.

Study findings were significantly influenced by the period in which the data was collected. Natural disasters, political instability and economic crises in 1998 and 2008 may have led to depletion of assets that are used to measure poverty status, leading to under-estimation of households that crossed the poverty threshold.