Effectiveness of Holistic Community Development on Households' Well-being and Women Empowerment: Evidence From Panel Data

M. Mizanur Sarker , Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University
Hidetoshi Yamashita, Hitotsubashi University

There has been marked progress on reducing poverty over the past decades. Heifer International Bangladesh has under taken an initiative which provides key income generating inputs to rural poor women. It is important to identify the effectiveness of these intervention programs for further policy intervention. This is the first paper examining the impact of the intervention programs of self help group on households` well-being and women empowerment in Bangladesh for panel data from 2013 to 2016. The We found that the intervention through community development program of self help group is statistically significantly positively associated with households` well-being improvement and women empowerment through participation of different activities. Moreover, we found no significant evidence of difference between male headed and female headed households in terms of intervention effect although there are significant differences among the locations. This indicates that female headed households are equally likely to adopt the intervention technologies.

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 Presented in Session 8. Economy, Labor Force, Education, & Inequality