In this paper we evaluate the impact of microcredit
on indicators of women’s empowerment in the urban slums of the Lahore district
of Pakistan. A household level instrument that contains information on different
dimensions of household decisions: child related, health, social mobility,
economic and major household purchase decisions was specifically designed and
implemented to explore the link between microcredit and women’s empowerment.
After controlling for endogeneity in our estimation by using proxies for
initial levels of empowerment, matching the controls and treated units on
observable characteristics and finally instrumenting for the treatment, this
paper finds no difference between the level of empowerment of treated and control
units. Participation in the microcredit program is found to be insignificant in
explaining all the outcome indicators of empowerment for the sampled
households.