Financial access and women's role in household decisions: Empirical evidence from India's National Rural Livelihoods project
研究印度国家农村生计项目下自助小组的贷款规模对女性家庭决策的影响，发现较大额度的社区投资基金能显著提升女性决策权和家庭内资源分配。
Government programs supporting self help groups (SHGs) generally target women on the assumption that doing so enhances women's decision-making. The empirical evidence, however, is mixed. We advance and test one explanation: the loan amounts offered by most SHGs may be too small to impact women. Our analysis is based on SHGs developed under India's National Rural Livelihoods Mission, a program that supported both small loans from internal savings and larger loans through Community Investment Funds (CIFs). Exploiting variation in their phasing and amount, we document a large effect of CIFs on women's decision-making and on intra-household allocations.