The Impacts of Microcredit: Evidence from Ethiopia

Last registered on March 08, 2014
View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
The Impacts of Microcredit: Evidence from Ethiopia
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0000305
First published
March 08, 2014, 12:54 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
Ethiopia
Region
Amhara and Oromiya

Primary Investigator

Name
Alessandro Tarozzi
Affiliation
Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Barcelona GSE
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Jaikishan Desai
PI Affiliation
ealth Services Research Centre, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2003-05-01
End date
2006-07-31
Keywords
Finance & Microfinance
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
O12, O16
Secondary IDs
Abstract
The primary objective of the study was to determine whether credit and family planning programs – together - have a larger impact on contraceptive use than either program operating on its own. By design, the program also assigned a random subset of the study areas to receive access to micro-loans. This study analyzes the impact of increased access to micro-loans on income-generating activities, labor supply, school attendance, women's empowerment and other indicators of socio-economic status.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Desai, Jaikishan and Alessandro Tarozzi. 2014. "The Impacts of Microcredit: Evidence from Ethiopia." AEA RCT Registry. March 08. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.305-1.0
Former Citation
Desai, Jaikishan and Alessandro Tarozzi. 2014. "The Impacts of Microcredit: Evidence from Ethiopia." AEA RCT Registry. March 08. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/305/history/1242
Sponsors & Partners

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2003-05-01
Intervention End Date
2006-07-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Borrowing behavior, income-generating activities, labor supply, schooling, indicators of women't empowerment.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Random assignment of administrative units to one of four experimental arms:
groups are:
(1) Credit and Family Planning
(2) Only Credit
(3) Only Family Planning
(4) Neither Credit nor Family Planning
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
Peasant Association (PA)
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
133 Peasant Associations (PAs)
Sample size: planned number of observations
6,400 households at baseline and 6,400 households at endline.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
(1) Credit and Family Planning, 35 PAs
(2) Only Credit, 34 PAs,
(3) Only Family Planning, 31 PAs
(4) Neither Credit nor Family Planning, 33 PAs
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Sample size was determined to ensure an 80 percent probability of rejecting the null of no effect at the 5 percent significant level, assuming a baseline contraceptive rate of 6 percent (estimated from the 2000 Demographic and Health Survey of Ethiopia), an intra-class correlation of 0.05 and a 12 percentage points difference in contraceptive behavior between any two of the four experimental arms.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information

Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
Yes
Intervention Completion Date
July 31, 2006, 12:00 +00:00
Data Collection Complete
Yes
Data Collection Completion Date
July 31, 2006, 12:00 +00:00
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)
133
Was attrition correlated with treatment status?
No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
No
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Abstract
The impact of community-based family planning programs and access to credit on contraceptive use, fertility, and family size preferences has not been established conclusively in the literature. We provide additional evidence on the possible effect of such programs by describing the results of a randomized field experiment whose main purpose was to increase the use of contraceptive methods in rural areas of Ethiopia. In the experiment, administrative areas were randomly allocated to one of three intervention groups or to a fourth control group. In the first intervention group, both credit and family planning services were provided and the credit officers also provided information on family planning. Only credit or family planning services, but not both, were provided in the other two intervention groups, while areas in the control group received neither type of service. Using pre- and post-intervention surveys, we find that neither type of program, combined or in isolation, led to an increase in contraceptive use that is significantly greater than that observed in the control group. We conjecture that the lack of impact has much to do with the mismatch between women’s preferred contraceptive method (injectibles) and the contraceptives provided by community-based agents (pills and condoms).
Citation
Jaikishan Desai and Alessandro Tarozzi (2011). “Microcredit, Family Planning Programs and Contraceptive Behavior: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Ethiopia”. Demography, 48(2), 749-782.
URL
http://www.springerlink.com/content/e54v3t17361uq570/
Abstract
We use data from a randomized controlled trial conducted in 2003-2006 in rural Amhara
and Oromiya (Ethiopia) to study the impacts of the introduction of microfinance in treated communities. We document that borrowing increased substantially in locations where the programs started their operations, but we find mixed evidence of improvements in a number of socio-economic outcomes, including income from agriculture, animal husbandry, non-farm self-employment, schooling and indicators of women's empowerment.
Citation
Tarozzi, Desai and Johnson (2013). On the Impact of Micro-credit: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Rural Ethiopia
URL
http://econ.upf.edu/~tarozzi/TarozziEtAlEthiopiaMF2013.pdf

Reports & Other Materials