The objective of IFPRI's multicountry research program on rural financial policies for food security of the poor is to identify policies and institutional arrangements that help the poor integrate themselves into sustainable savings and credit systems such that they have an increased capacity to...

This paper presents a new methodological framework for measuring the level of household access to credit. It provides an analytical framework for examining the determinants of household credit limits and derives implications on information needed to examine the extent to which households are...

It has been long hypothesized that lack of access to credit is the main reason why, despite higher profitability of High Yielding Varieties (HYVs), farmers in developing countries continue to allocate a portion of their land to traditional crop varieties. The empirical testing of this hypothesis...

This report presents information on the credit constraints that poor rural households face ... in nine countries of Asia and Africa (Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, Egypt, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Nepal, and Pakistan). It uses this information to make the case for appropriate public intervention...

The question raised in the title is an important one to the microfinance sector, especially since the Microcredit Summit held in Washington, DC, in 1997. In order to gain more transparency on the depth of poverty outreach, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest (CGAP) supported research at...

In most developing countries, it is the private, informal markets that the rural poor have traditionally turned to service their financial needs. Why have these institutions succeeded in providing services to the poor when formal institutions have not? Do these informal institutions provide any...

Lending is a risky enterprise because repayment of loans can seldom be fully guaranteed. The failure of a large number of state-sponsored agricultural development banks in many developing countries was due, among other things, to their inability to ensure good repayment rates among their...

For poor rural families in developing countries, access to credit and savings facilities has the potential to make the difference between grinding poverty and an economically secure life. Well-managed savings facilities permit households to build up funds for future investment or consumption....

Governments, policymakers, and donors attach a great deal of importance to poverty outreach—the extent to which MFIs serve poor and disadvantaged locations—when evaluating microfinance institutions (MFIs). With the above considerations in mind, IFPRI undertook a study of the service...

This policy brief summarizes lessons learned from IFPRI's multicountry program on rural finance and household food security with regard to the poors' demand for financial services. The lessons are derived from detailed household surveys conducted in nine countries of Asia and Africa: Bangladesh,...