I många delar av världen finns mikrolån för fattiga individer. Dessa möjliggör olika typer av småinvesteringar som t.ex. kan hjälpa människor att starta eller expandera egna företag. Att lånen kan öka inkomster är en sak; kan de även öka människors upplevda lycka? Det undersöks i den nya studien ”Credit Access and Life Satisfaction: Evaluating the Non Monetary Effects of Micro Finance”:

Rescue from poverty involves relevant non income (or non economic) effects arising from a process of ”dignification” which increases self-esteem and social recognition of the financed borrower. As a consequence, we expect that when measuring the impact of microfinance program on a broader concept of wellbeing such as life satisfaction, such impact has an independent effect not absorbed by the change in income generated by the loan. Our results support this hypothesis of a relevant microfinance effect independent of income showing its robustness to survivorship, selection and interview bias and its sensitivity to the number of credit cycles. Actually, we observe that, in spite of a low correlation between participation to the microfinance project and household income, when adding the MFI borrower status to the standard life satisfaction estimate the effect of household income disappears. This suggests that non income effects absorbed by the MFI status variable are crucial to generate the positive effect of the program on life satisfaction.

Det är lätt att se riskerna med lån. Sådana finns förstås, men det finns också många positiva sidor, vilket denna studie illustrerar. En organisation som förmedlar mikrolån är Kiva.