These are fine, sterling sentiments, but they suffer from one big problem: microlending doesn’t work. As strategies for ending poverty go, microlending appears to be among the worst that has ever been tried, just one step up from doing nothing to help the poor at all. In a carefully researched 2010 book called Why Doesn’t Microfinance Work?, the development consultant Milford Bateman debunks virtually every aspect of the microlending gospel. It doesn’t empower women, Bateman writes; it makes them into debtors. It encourages people to take up small, futile enterprises that have no chance of
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