The ultimate goal of all impact evaluations, and their greatest challenge, is to establish credibly that the intervention caused a difference in the lives of the participants. Using microinsurance as a context, this paper looks at the challenges, components and importance of impact evaluations.

The authors of this study investigate whether having access to microinsurance improved the quality of healthcare for poor patients. They found that having access to insurance was not significantly associated with receiving better quality healthcare. The paper provides recommendations for healthcare providers to improve the quality of medical care received by their clients and suggestions for further research on the mechanisms that determine health care quality.

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Actively studying take-up rates, or participation rates, can help us understand the demand for different microfinance products, and how existing products might be improved to attract more clients and serve them better. This note reviews the evidence on take-up. It first discusses why take-up rates and participation are important, and how they can be measured. It then goes on to review survey data on why people don’t use microfinance products when they are available, and offers guidance on how low take-up rates might be addressed.

When CARE India field officers delivered emergency relief services to the coastal regions ravaged by the 2004 tsunami, they were struck by the communities’ vulnerability to shocks and lack of access to appropriate risk protection tools, and assessed that microinsurance could be an effective product for these communities. Out of this determination, the CARE Insure Lives and Livelihoods (ILAL) microinsurance program was born. In collaboration with Allianz SE and Bajaj Allianz, CARE India designed a broad, long-term formal microinsurance program. The ILAL approach prioritized clients’ understanding of the value of insurance over purchasing a policy: the ultimate objective of the program was not to distribute policies, but to improve communities’ risk management capacities by improving their understanding of insurance.

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Expanding access to commercial credit is a key ingredient of development strategies worldwide. There is less consensus on the role of consumer credit, particularly when extended at high interest rates. Popular skepticism about “unproductive” and “usurious” lending is fueled by academic work highlighting behavioral biases that induce overborrowing. We estimate the impacts of expanding access to consumer credit at 200% APR using a field experiment and follow-up survey and administrative data. The randomly assigned marginal loans produced significant net benefits for borrowers across a wide range of outcomes. There is also some evidence that the marginal loans were profitable.

Replication of seminal studies on the impact of microfinance.

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Examines the mechanics, merits and limitations of randomized experiments in microfinance.

This paper reports on the first randomized evaluation of the impact of introducing microcredit in a new market in the slums of Hyderabad, India.

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