Testing a Methodology to Assess Microcredit Target Poverty in Bosnia-Herzegovina

First European Research Conference on Microfinance, 2-4 June 2009, CERMI (Centre for European Research in Microfinance), Brussels, Belgium

29 Pages Posted: 1 Jul 2009

See all articles by Chiara Sanseverino

Chiara Sanseverino

University of Milan

Nicolò Bassani

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Silvestro Rivolta

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Date Written: June 3, 2009

Abstract

The aim of the work is to develop new tools for targeting the poor, tracking changes in poverty over time and reporting on people poverty in the contest of microcredit and microfinance interventions. The chosen methodology uses a poverty scorecard (Schreiner, 2006) applied to a rural context in Central Bosnia-Herzegovina were, since 2005, Schreiner, Matul and Kline, elaborated a scorecard method to rank clients of PRIZMA, a Bosnian MFI, by relative poverty and the likelihood that a client is poor by an absolute standard. The poverty absolute standard was derived from the LSMS (World Bank, 2002), the State Agency for Statistics in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the federation Statistical Institute and the Republica Srpska Statistical Institute. The methodology is based on a selection of seven household indicators, chosen to be strongly correlated to poverty status, local context and easy and inexpensive to collect. Then a scorecard is derived by assigning weights to reflect their correlation with poverty status. Finally, weighted indicators are added up to produce scores that can be ranked. We applied the methodology to a microcredit international cooperation intervention promoted by no-profit Italian stakeholders. Our purposes were both measuring the poverty profile in order to build a monitoring instrument to evaluate projects and tracking a model to be replicated from other actors.

Keywords: microcredit, microfinance institutions, poverty scorecard, international cooperation, Bosnia and Herzegovina

JEL Classification: G21, I32, O19

Suggested Citation

Sanseverino, Chiara and Bassani, Nicolò and Rivolta, Silvestro, Testing a Methodology to Assess Microcredit Target Poverty in Bosnia-Herzegovina (June 3, 2009). First European Research Conference on Microfinance, 2-4 June 2009, CERMI (Centre for European Research in Microfinance), Brussels, Belgium, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1427684 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1427684

Chiara Sanseverino (Contact Author)

University of Milan ( email )

Via Festa del Perdono, 7
Milan, 20122
Italy

HOME PAGE: http://www.unimi.it/

Nicolò Bassani

affiliation not provided to SSRN ( email )

Silvestro Rivolta

affiliation not provided to SSRN ( email )

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