Microfinance and Poverty Alleviation: A Bibliometric Assessment of Research Trends

Abstract

Nowadays, microfinance has become one of the most popular funding options for new alleviating poverty, particularly for vulnerable groups in low-income communities. Microfinance gives access to financial products, particularly for those who have been excluded from the regular financial system. However, while popular research on microfinance reveals its impact on women empowerments, it is still insufficient to grasp its dynamizing role on poverty alleviation. There is still a big void in the literature on examining microfinance as a funding alternative, hence this paper aims to find this relationship in the literature. A bibliometric analysis is employed to evaluate the performance of publications as well as a word co-occurrence analysis from 2014 to 2024. The articles which are indexed in Scopus database have been considered through Vos Viewer software v1.6.20, developed by Nees Jan van Eck and Ludo Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Waltman at Leiden University, Netherland, was employed to structure the data and generate the bibliometric analysis. Microfinance institutions, education, entrepreneurship, organizational performance, company microcredits, and female microentrepreneurs have been recognized as key areas for future research. The document concludes with proposals for future lines of investigation. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the academic community is becoming increasingly interested in the topic, with 2024 being the year with the most articles written on it.