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Summary This paper analyzes the impact of different microfinance providers on basic rights and quality of life. Data were collected in two phases from 300 microfinance beneficiaries and 200 control respondents. Descriptive statistics, factor analysis, multiple regression, propensity score matching, and treatment effect models were used for analysis. Microfinance appears to increase the basic rights of respondents and help improve quality of life; the positive changes are consistently higher in non-governmental microfinance recipients. These data may help to formulate new policies that help to improve rural livelihood.

The New Rural Cooperative Medical Service System (NRCMS) in China has been established to ensure improved medical care support for all categories of Chinese peasants to offset their burden of excessive medical care expenditures. The primary aim of this paper is to identify an appropriate alternative modelling approach for the patients’ medical expenditures. Data were collected from Jiaojiang city through cluster and multistage random sampling procedure, which was comprised of 4,630 enrolled rural people under NRCMS. The paper presented the fi rst comparison of common econometric medical expenditures modelling approaches. Major fi ndings reveal that the Generalized Linear Model (GLM) predictive accuracy appears to be better than the Finite Mixture Model (FMM) and GLM (log link) was the best performer among all approaches. It may be attributed due to the structural difference of medical expenditures between China and other developing countries compared to the developed countries. This suggests that the Chinese government may fi nd an alternative to choose GLM approach among others to minimize the peasants’ medical expenditures under NRCMS.

Bangladesh is a pioneer and home of conceptualizing micro-credit program. It has undertaken a number of such programs to reduce poverty and bring about socio-economic changes in the rural community. The main purpose of this paper is to give an overview about access to micro-credit for rural poor and its impact on their poverty situation and relevant factors related to income of the micro-credit recipients. Data was collected in two phases from the same respondents (April 2009 and April 2010) using a face-to-face interview schedule from a sample of 360 micro-credit recipients. Additionally, another set of 60 non-credit beneficiary respondents was also taken as a control group to compare the consequences of the program. Major findings reveal that positive impact was found on income, assets endowment, standard of living and poverty reduction. Utilization of credit appears to be major factor for credit recipients raising income compared to their control group. This shows that micro-credit tends to be an important factor to have an impact on household income which minimizes the poverty situation to a reasonable extent.