Impact of Microfinance on Poverty Alleviation: The Study of District Bahawal Nagar, Punjab, Pakistan

The core motive for conducting this study is to assess the impact of microfinance on poverty alleviation keeping in view the factors that affect the poverty including to fulfillment of basic needs, living standard and self-employment. This is a survey based research & primary data is collected for this study through a structured questionnaire that comprising various aspects of microfinance & poverty alleviation including fulfillment of basic needs, living standard & self-employment. Conveyance sampling technique was used for data collection form the customers of Khushalli Bank Ltd (KBL), Kashaf Microfinance Bank, Tameer Microfinance Bank Ltd (TMBL) & Akhovat Trust that are operating in district Bahawalnagar. Total valid no of respondents are N=263. Correlation analysis, and three Linear Regressions model is used to determine the relationship among microfinance, basic needs, living standard and self-employment to examine the impact of microfinance on poverty. The study found a positive impact of microfinance on poverty alleviation as the significant relationship between independent variable Microfinance (MF) and dependent variable including Fulfillment of basic needs (BN), Living Standard (LS) & Self Employment was fund that leads to decrease in poverty as well.