Reports

This paper assesses the impact of educational intervention on knowledge, attitude and willingness-to-pay for health insurance using occupational solidarity. It also explores the views of relevant actors on occupational solidarity-based health insurance. Based on multiple regression analysis and experimental design, the combined results of the experiments indicate that the educational intervention has improved the knowledge and willingness to pay for health insurance among informal sector workers in Bangladesh.

Dr. Dean Karlan, Dr. Nava Ashrad, and Dr. Wesley Yin conducted an experiment in Philippines, where they offered commitment savings products to a subset of 710 randomly selected clients of a Phillipine bank. Since after 12 months the average savings balances increased, this study demonstrated that commitment savings products can result in lasting change in savings beyond the initial, positive short-term response to the new product.

In this paper, Dr. Pascaline Drupas and Jonathan Robinson used data from a field experiment in Kenya to explore why providing individuals with simple, informal savings techniques can increase investment in preventive health and reduce vulnerability to health shocks.

On March 11, 2012, professors Pascaline Dupas and Jonathan Robinson published a study on "Savings Constraints and Microenterprise Development: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Kenya" which was conducted in 2006, 2007, and 2008 and funded by The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). Sampling was done in three waves with a total of 200 people. Dupas and Robinson worked with the Financial Services Association, a village bank in the market town of Bumala between Nairobi and Kampala, in order to offer savings accounts to randomly selected microenterpreneurs. These savings accounts did not pay interest, but clients were charged for withdrawals. The researchers analyzed savings account usage, which was recorded daily in logbooks over the period of several months. The researchers found that women benefited from these accounts and invested more in their businesses than men. Additionally, there was not a very high uptake of savings accounts, which could be attributed to people's mistrust of village banks. To learn more, please refer to the following post by David Roodman called “First Randomized Trial of Microsavings."

In October of 2011, economists Lasse Brune, Dean Yang, Xavier Giné and Jessica Goldberg published a new study on commitment savings. This study was conducted with the help from the formal bank Opportunity International Bank of Malawi. This study supports some of the earlier findings from a study by professors Pascaline Dupas and Jonathan Robinson and provides interesting additional information. This study focused on male tobacco farmers, who received loans from the Opportunity International Bank of Malawi as part of a 10-15 member group. As David Roodman pointed out in his blog post, “this study was designed to shed light on why commitment savings accounts help people, by measuring impacts on intermediate variables.”

In October 2006, USAID launched the $80 million Agriculture, Rural Investment and Enterprise Strengthening (ARIES) Program. Administered by the Academy for Educational Development in partnership with FINCA, the World Council of Credit Unions, ACDI/VOCA, MISFA, and Shorebank International, ARIES aimed to create a strong foundation for a sustainable, market-driven rural finance program in Afghanistan that would also expand employment opportunities. By establishing or partnering with commercial banks, microfinance service providers and rural financial cooperatives, ARIES supported the provision of a broad range of financial services to rural microentrepreneurs and households. ARIES accomplishments included 222,000 loans delivered to 65,000 borrowers and $130+ million in capital injected into the Afghan economy through 119 financial services outlets. ARIES was particularly successful in reaching out to female borrowers who represent 49 percent of clients by loans made. In September 2009, ARIES had ongoing activities in 24 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Models for expanding access for formal financial services under ARIES included:

• Creating a network of Sharia-compliant Islamic Investment and Finance Cooperatives (IIFCs), which offer nearly 40,000 formerly unbanked Afghans access to savings, loans, and leasing services.
• Establishing a wholesale window for small and medium enterprise lending in the Microfinance Investment Support Facility for Afghanistan (MISFA-A), which supports commercialization of the Afghan financial sector.
• Establishing a non-banking financial services company, Afghanistan Rural Finance Company (ARFC), which guides and lends to rural and agribusiness small and medium enterprises.

This report includes a general overview of program accomplishments and impact, detailed sections on the activities under specific program components, along with sections on challenges and lessons learned.

This second volume of Protecting the poor is a unique collection of recent practices and emerging ideas in microinsurance. It covers numerous innovations that have emerged in recent years to meet the challenges of providing insurance to low-income people, from new products and delivery channels to consumer education tools, while examining changes in regulations, providers and schemes. As the microinsurance community dramatically evolves and millions more low-income households have access to better insurance cover, this timely second volume will be an invaluable resource for policymakers, insurers, academics and NGOs.

This microREPORT analyzes the domestic and export markets, channels and competitors for Kenyan livestock and meat.

Kenyans consume an average of 15-16 kg of red meat (meat and offal from cattle, sheep, goats and camels) per capita annually, for a national total of approximately 600,000 MT of red meat per year. Cattle are the most important source of red meat, accounting for 77 percent of Kenya’s ruminant off-take for slaughter. Approximately 80 to 90 percent of the red meat consumed in Kenya comes from livestock that are raised by pastoralists, with the remainder coming from highland cattle. While Kenyan pastoralists account for the majority of Kenya’s meat supply (approximately 60 to 65 percent of the total), a significant portion (20 to 25 percent) comes from livestock raised in neighboring countries with significant livestock populations (Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda), making Kenya a meat deficit country.

Market-based development programmes can help people living in poverty benefit from markets and lift themselves out of poverty. However, many such approaches do not pay attention to power imbalances that perpetuate marginalisation and poverty. To reach their fullest potential, market-based programmes should actively strengthen the power of marginalised smallholders and women.

Major events in the market system, induced by changes in policy, regulation, social movements or business models can provide opportunities to intervene and rebalance power. Market-based programmes should also be complemented by non-market interventions that address poverty and sustainability issues in household and environmental systems.

Through its work, Oxfam has encountered some of the challenges and limitations of market-based approaches. This paper is intended to raise these challenges with the broader community of development practitioners employing market-based approaches and share approaches Oxfam has taken to addressing them. The most conspicuous of these challenges is a need to address power imbalances between smallholders and larger businesses, as well as between women and men.

This study takes stock of USAID’s rural and agricultural finance initiatives from missions around the world as well as from USAID headquarters.  It corresponds with the study “Rural and Agricultural Finance: Taking Stock of Five Years of Innovation,” which catalogues innovations in rural finance both by international donor-funded projects as well as private initiatives.  This paper explores the recent and current USAID projects that address the issue of rural finance, and looks at how the projects are expanding access to rural finance. It ends with some key conclusions looking across projects to provide insights that can inform USAID’s rural finance strategy. Be sure to see the "Related" section below for the excel annex that provides summary information for the projects listed in this report.