Improving Household Well-Being by Improving Access to Credit

Principal Investigators: Agnes R. Quisumbing, IFPRI; Linda Montillo-Burton, Research Institute for Mindanao Culture (RIMCU)

Publications & Outputs   |   Project Proposal

Problem & Objective
The research program aims to understand how access to rural financial services affects patterns of physical and human capital accumulation, economic mobility, and well-being over a long-period of time, and to assess how these patterns differ between commercialized and food crop oriented agriculture.

Research Context
The research will involve re-surveying original respondents and their children from a sample of agricultural households in Bukidnon, in the Mindanao region of the Philippines (one of the poorest in the country) previously surveyed in 1984 and 1992. Using a quasi-experimental design, the study will identify the differential effects of credit constraints on households exposed to commercial agriculture and those relying on food crop production.

Policy Implications
By understanding what factors improve or constrain a household's access to credit, the research will help inform policymakers of ways to improve financial services in rural areas, which has the potential to influence agricultural productivity, and to protect vulnerable groups through improved delivery of financial services.

Publications and Outputs

BASIS Briefs   |   Other Publications   |    Trip Reports

• Weighing Risks: Short and Long Term Impacts of Credit Constraints, by Steve Boucher and Agnes Quisumbing. May 2006. 4 pages. (BASIS Brief no. 44)
  [Adobe Acrobat PDF 47K ]
• Looking for Long-Term Wellbeing: Access to Credit and the Impact on Rural Households, by Agnes R. Quisumbing and Linda Montillo-Burton. BASIS Brief No. 17. November 2003, 4 pages.
  [Adobe Acrobat PDF 182K]

• Moving Forward, Looking Back: The Impact of Migrants’ Remittances on Assets, Consumption, and Credit Constraints in Sending Communities in the Rural Philippines, by Agnes R. Quisumbing and Scott McNiven. November 2006, 40 pages.
• Many Paths to the Same Moon? Moving out of Poverty in Bukidnon, Philippines, by Chona Echavez, Erlinda Montillo-Burton, Scott McNiven, and Agnes R. Quisumbing. November 2006, 67 pages.
• Microfinance and Financial Institutions in Bukidnon, by Beethoven Morales. October 2004, 24 pages.
  [Adobe Acrobat PDF 159K]
• How Accurate are Reports of Credit Constraints? Reconciling Theory with Respondents' Claims in Bukidnon, Philippines, by Daniel O. Gilligan, Sarah Harrower and Agnes R. Quisumbing. July 2005, 58 pages.
  [Adobe Acrobat PDF 581K]
• Groups, Networks and Social Capital in Rural Philippine Communities, by Marie Godquin and Agnes R. Quisumbing. October 2005, 41 pages.
  [Adobe Acrobat 1126K]
• Migration and the Rural-Urban Continuum: Evidence from the Rural Philippines, by Agnes R. Quisumbing and Scott McNiven. October 2005, 62 pages.
  [Adobe Acrobat 569K]