Microfinance Mission of Poverty Alleviation: Empirical Evidence from South Asia

This article provides new insight to depth of outreach (a measure of mission drift) in the South Asian microfinance markets. For the purpose data of 62 rated MFIs for the period of seven years from (2007-2014) were analyzed. Data were collected from four South Asian countries, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nepal. The objectives of the study was to investigate does microfinance helps in poverty alleviation or MFIs drifting from their original mission of serving the poor to making profits?. We have used fixed effect method to measures mission drift. The results reveal that the MFIs are align with their original mission of poverty alleviation but the negative relationship of women empowerment show that south Asia women's were least served by MFIs in the subject area.