| Microfinance plays a significant role in providing small loans which are known as microcredit and some other non-financial support services which are known as microcredit plus program to the underserved population lives primarily in the countryside and semi-urban areas.Generally,these groups of populations are traditionally excluded from the formal financial system due to multiple constraints such as geographical obstacles,lack collateral or some other matters like country-specific shortcomings.China and Bangladesh both the countries in Asia Pacific region adopted microfinance to reach out to these poor groups of population and trying to integrate them into economic mainstream.In the present study,we analyzed overall impact of microfinance on the rural livelihood condition,entrepreneurial expansion and empowerment state of both countries respondents.Additionally,we also analyzed the determinants that play role in indebted farmers' adoption decisions of financial risk management strategy with the help of savings,skill development training and social cohesion program which are under microcredit plus program.This cross country study evidence can be very helpful for microfinance practitioners and policymakers to better understand the present situation of this program in the context of both of the developed and developing nation in the Asia Pacific region,which can lead them to further development and improvement of the implementation policy of microfinance program for sustainable development of the rural poor group.We analyzed the impact of microfinance on the quality of rural livelihood and the expansion of enterprises beyond self-employment as our first objective of this study.We used panel data and primary data were collected in two phases from each group of respondents.First-phase data were collected in July-August 2017,and second-phase data were collected in January-February 2019.total of 600 respondents(400 microcredit participants [treatment group] and 200 microcredit nonparticipants [control group])in Bangladesh and 550(300microcredit recipients [treatment group] and 250 microcredit non-recipients [control group])in China.Descriptive statistics,two-sample t-test,multiple regression analysis,Difference in difference with propensity score matching estimation was used to analyze the data.The results conclude that microfinance increased the quality of life of the respondents and helped them improve their quality of life,as indicated by reduced food insecurity by increasing food stock and expenditure capability on food purchasing food items,clothing,housing,health,and education facilities.Though both countries' participants gain from program implementation,the participants from China which is a developed nation showed better development in gathering luxuries,income,reinvest capacity;whereas participants from Bangladesh which is a developing nation shows improvement in basic rights related issues such as food sock availability,clothing,and health care.Further,the participants from both countries gain impressive development in the case of entrepreneurship development beyond selfemployment by increasing profit and number of wage employees increasing.The positive changes were consistently impressive in both of the countries' microfinance recipients than the non-recipients.These data may help the microfinance sector in particular to formulate a policy framework that drives improvements in sustainable rural development.Women empowerment is one of the major concerns of Sustainable Development Goals and also considered as a key factor for overall development of a country.Though China earns rapid economic growth in last decade but still fighting for sustainable women empowerment.Bangladesh is also facing almost similar cases for women empowerment.Therefore,the main purpose of this study is to explore the impact of microcredit on various women empowerment indicators such as empowerment inside family,sociopolitical,and economic empowerment.China and Bangladesh are selected as a case to understand the real condition of women empowerment by using microcredit more clearly.Data has been collected from the Grameen Bank,Bangladesh,and Rural Credit Cooperative,China,by using a multistage sampling technique in 2017 and 2019.A unique panel dataset comprising microcredit beneficiary and non-beneficiary has been selected for comparison.This study revealed that microcredit beneficiary women are comparatively more empowered than non-participant women in terms of social,economic and political aspects in both countries.It also revealed that women in China get more empowered after adopting the credit facilities than the women from Bangladesh,which could indicate that microfinance program works more actively in developed country.It also explores that entrepreneurship development has a strong positive significant relationship with all the empowerment dimensions in both countries,although more future studies needed to be conducted to generalize the findings.We collected another 400 data for a group of farmers who took microcredit for smoothing their rice farming activity and then adopt another strategy to overcome the financial risk arises from taking credit.These farmers living in more disadvantageous areas and they took credit and credit plus programs like business skill development training,increasing social networks,creating forward-backward contracts.This credit plus program helps them to adopt off-farm income activity and contract farming successfully beside ricefarming and ensure a fixed amount of money in hand to repay the loan and smoothing up agricultural farming.The empirical findings indicate that education,access to technologies,household income,savings,and distance from the industrial areas are the major factors that affect farmer's adoption choice and most of the farmers are risk-averse.Moreover,the adoption choice of one risk management tool may motivate farmers to adopt another.We added this part in our study because there is huge confusion about the success of microfinance and many studies were done on the negative impact of this program on the borrowers'.This issue is still arguable and so why we tried to draw an example in our study by attaining this objective that credit plus program with credit can be used as a very helpful tool for the farmer group to overcome the problems related to credit default and other financial issues.In this study,we tried to find out all these issues related to impact among cross nation.We studied cross-nation not to compare among developed and developing nations rather for making a clear understanding that how the program impacted differently in a different location.By this means,we could suggest some policy implications that could help to minimize the poverty level,limiting the credit constraints in rural areas,empowering the women to add them with the mainstream population and improve the farmers' condition by adopting a financial inclusion strategy that is best fit for the specific country condition.A future study could be recommended to determine what are the major social,cultural and economic differences in these two nations that could influence the impact of a specific financial inclusion on livelihood development and poverty alleviation. |
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