Assessment of the poverty level of microfinance clients is important for both practitioners and donors. For practitioners, increased understanding of the target market and whether it is being reached can help in the design of financial services better suited to the needs of different groups of...

This paper is about microfinance and its contribution to the eradication of poverty for millions of the world's poorest people. The Millennium Development goals set a critical challenge of halving absolute poverty in the world by 2015. Microfinance can make an important contribution to these...

The 1998 Survey of Small Business Finances provides robust information on the financing of small businesses including an overview of their firm’s organization, financial characteristics, and credit use. Information from the survey is used in this study to compare the financial characteristics...