Well, I don't know of hard evidence, but it certainly seems to me that this must be a major impact, especially in more rural areas that are served by microfinance institutions, but also in urban areas that are served by multiple microfinance institutions. There's often quite a bit of competition in the more urban areas amongst microfinance institutions, and they are hiring large numbers of people. I think the estimate is something like 3,500 microfinance institutions worldwide, and that doesn't include credit cooperatives and such. All of these institutions are hiring more staff as a result of the need for those staff to be making smaller transactions, going out into the rural areas and such.
Now, there are two impacts. The obvious one is that these people are getting jobs and they are getting career development. They're learning skills. But in addition, this is a way in which the young to middle-aged people of these countries can engage in giving back to their own communities, because they very often come from these same areas. Often that's a requirement, that they speak the local language of the communities they're serving. So they very often are from these communities, and this gives them an opportunity not only to earn money themselves, which can be channelled back to their relatives, perhaps, in similar communities, but it also gives them an opportunity to engage in their country's development, and they really are inspired by that.
This is particularly true when they're more than loan officers, when they are actually engaged in an educational process with their clients. They develop a relationship of listening and engaging with their lives in a way that can only be beneficial, not just to the clients but to them as individuals and to those they talk to elsewhere in the society. That engagement with the poor and what their lives are really like, getting past stereotypes, can really be a very important factor in the development of a country.
So I'm glad you brought this up, because it is an important impact of the development of the microfinance industry.