Banking for the Poor: Evidence from India

State led credit and savings programs have been implemented in nu-merous low income countries, but their success in reaching the poorremains widely debated. We report on research which exploits the pol-icy features of the Indian social banking program to provide evidenceon this issue. State-led branch expansion into rural unbanked locationsreduced poverty across Indian states. In addition, the enforcement ofdirected bank lending requirements was associated with increased bankborrowing among the poor, in particular low caste and tribal groups.[...]