ABSTRACT
With a data set collected from secondary sources for 92 countries pertaining to six year period, mostly from developing and undeveloped countries this study tries to identify the relationship between the widely acclaimed and practised microfinance (mf) intervention and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) enshrined by United Nations to be achieved by 2015. The regression results based on pooled data for these countries along with the robust test for the different models show a significant relationship between the participation of poor in the mf programme and the decline in the poverty head count ratio across the world, which is the first goal among the eight MDGs. However, with the women empowerment indicators the relationships of MF variables were found to be very week. For both the second and third MDGs when female participation in the school educations was captured under two other indicators, mf variables revealed significant but week relations with them. These results establish that while the participation of poor in mf has helped in bringing down the poverty level across the nations, the social variables were found less influenced by the programme. So, the contribution of mf to the MDGs was limited in nature. It is felt that for bringing an enduring change in the lives of poor, along with mf initiatives several other grass root level multi-pronged strategies need to be intervened.
