Investigating the Effects of Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia’s Microcredit Programmes on Employment in Rural Malaysia

The creation of either self-employment or wage-earning job opportunities is considered one of the more effective strategies for sustainable poverty alleviation. The Malaysian government promulgated a national plan for poverty eradication in its Vision 2020 agenda by emphasizing full employment. However, the classic trickle-down effects of large-scale industrialization policies can hardly be expected to reach the bottom-most tier of a country’s poorest group. Instead, more precise tools such as microcredit loans and socio-economic support services would better address hardcore poverty. This paper employs a cross-sectional design with a stratified random sampling method to examine the impact of Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia’s (AIM) microcredit programmes for women on employment generation at the client, household and community levels in rural Peninsular Malaysia.