The impact of microcredit and personal empowerment on women borrower’s quality of life in Pakistan

Improving the quality life of the marginalized poor women is one of the major development issues in Pakistan. In this regard, the microcredit program seems to provide a practical solution to improve their quality of life. Nevertheless, owing to many socio-cultural factors that limit their personal empowerment and accessibility to microcredit, the effectiveness of microcredit in improving their quality of life is an issue. The study therefore, aims to estimate the impact of microcredit and personal empowerment on the quality of life of women in Pakistan. Towards this end, primary data has been gathered by using a survey questionnaire. A stratified random sampling technique has been used to collect data from 400 women borrowers in Bahawalpur, Pakistan, who has taken microcredit from three major microcredit institutions - Khushhali Bank Limited, Tameer Microfinance Bank and National Rural Support Program Bank. The data analysis has been carried out using the Multinomial Logit Model. The findings of the study shows that microcredit which is measured by loan duration, loan size and training, is found to be significant in explaining the quality life of the women borrowers. Interestingly, personal empowerment is also found to have a significant relationship with quality of life. Furthermore, the economic decision making domain of personal empowerment is also found to be significant in explaining the quality life of the women borrowers. The study concludes that the effort to improve the quality of life of women in Pakistan should not be focused just on the accessibility of credit to them. It must come simultaneously with advancing their personal empowerment. This can be done through improving their economic decision- making ability such as improvement in the level of education, ability to move freely and reducing the sociocultural-political barriers that hinder them from realizing their full potential of personal empowerment

Microcredit, personal empowerment and quality of life of women borrowers – a theoretical framework

The issue of marginalization of women in development, particularly in South Asia, has been highlighted in the development literature. Women in this region are found to be generally poor, lack of education, and have a low quality of life, due to various economic and cultural reasons. Thus, unlocking the potentials of these women appears to be a plausible move as this could improve not only their income, but also their quality of life.One such initiative to unlock the potential of these women is micro credit program, where small loan is given to these women to enable them to embark on economic activities, which consequently improve their household income and quality of life.Indeed, there have been many studies that examine the relationship between micro credit and quality of life, and found that there is a positive relationship between micro credit and quality of life of the borrowers (women). However, most of these studies implicitly assume that the impact of micro credit on quality of life is direct, and hence, did not consider the role of other factors in evaluating the impact of micro credit on quality of life. Here, we argue that, the impact of micro credit on quality of life is not direct, but rather indirect.We believe personal empowerment does play an important role in influencing the impact of micro credit on quality of life.The mere availability of micro credit, in our view, did not guarantee a positive impact on quality of life. Rather, the availability of credit to borrowers affects their personal confidence, which consequently affects their level of quality of life.This paper discusses the theoretical framework by which these variables – microcredit, personal empowerment and quality of life – are inter-related

Role of Social Commerce Forums in Establishing Purchase Intention: A Nexus Between Credibility, Trust and E-Commerce Satisfaction

Social media is persuading to consumers in field of social commerce (S-Commerce) by providing goods or services and fulfill their demands in a very short period of time. Electronic-satisfaction (e-satisfaction) and credibility have distinctive activities of social media that motivate and successively build the trust at various stages of purchase intentions. For better understanding it is necessary to recognize the factors of social commerce such as referrals, reviews & ratings because they have a strong influence on buying behaviour of ecommerce consumers. A quantitative and descriptive approach has been projected through simple random sampling. A cross-sectional data of 250 participants were collected by a survey questionnaire from social commerce users examined through Partial Least Square- Structural Educational Modeling-3 (PLS-SEM-3). A social support theory has supported relationship on trust through social media activities, surface credibility, and presumedcredibility as well as e-commerce satisfaction. Interestingly trust, surface and presumed credibility considerably significant impact on e-commerce and social commerce satisfaction that leads to develop purchase intention. The current study theoretically contributes novel indicator, presumed credibility in the social commerce industry and practically it promotes specific websites that triggers trust

Parkinson disease: identifying different players sharing a common principle

Parkinson disease is a multifactorial molecular disorder. Miscellaneous regulators have been characterized to date and their implication in disease progression is well documented. Compromised neuromuscular activity is a serious threat posed by malfunctioning of various regulators. The integrity and maintenance of neural architecture underpins neural activities. Despite the fact that various breakthroughs have been made, yet many proteins are unidentified while some unaddressed. Furthermore, miRNA pathway impairment results in subversion of core biological system and draws attention towards novel miRNA-based therapeutic strategies. Thus proteins and mitrons work in collaboration with various cellular organelles to ensure normal dynamics of neural circuitry. In this review we will emphasize the derailed activities of proteins at molecular level that might help in getting a step closer to personalized medicine

Impactibility Characteristics of Personal Empowerment on Women Borrowers’ Quality of Life, Bahawalpur, Pakistan.

This study attempts to understand how personal empowerment can be used to improve quality of life in women and maintain sustainable economic development in Bahawalpur, Pakistan. It analyzed that personal empowerment is an important determinant for women improving their quality of life.It also put forth light on the linkage between the economic development and quality of life.This essay tries to fulfill this gap by expending the analysis on personal empowerment that seems to provide a practical solution to reduce poverty and to improve quality of life by unlocking the potentials of the poor women by polishing her ability in economic decision making, giving freedom of movement and awareness in political socio-cultural conditions.This raises the question whether personal empowerment also leads to better quality of life.Pragmatic substantiation on the relationship between personal empowerment and quality of life is done by doing multinomial logit model analysis. The survey has been conducted in the Bahawalpur State of Southern Punjab, Pakistan.A cross-sectional primary data of 400 women borrowers of the three microcredit provided banks namely Khushhali Bank, Tameer Microfinance Bank and NRSP-Bank in Bahawalpur, Southern Punjab, Pakistan was obtained to carry out the analysis.The findings illustrate that personal empowerment has a significant impact not only on the personal development of women also have an impact on quality of life.The result demonstrates that personal empowerment is a crucial aspect of attaining a good quality of life, especially in economically non-developed states

Adaptation, validation and translation of the women personal empowerment scale

Pakistan ranks third in the list of the most hazardous countries for woman's survival. In this study, by using the quantitative approach, the scale adaptation process was conducted in three phases as integration of instruments, generation of items, and generalization of expert reviews. Back-to-Back translation on 40 women was done to determine the understanding of the Urdu language of personal empowerment scale. Sequentially, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was performed on the data collected from 360 respondents for the Construct Validity Method (CVM) on personal empowerment Scale-Urdu Version. The results confirmed the validity of the scale. Cross-language validity was also determined. The empirical findings also indicated that women's personal empowerment plays a significant role in improving their quality of life. Theorists and practitioners need to pay more attention to the generalization of the personal empower scale

Mucosal genomics implicate lymphocyte activation and lipid metabolism in refractory environmental enteric dysfunction

Background & aims: Environmental enteric dysfunction (EED) limits the Sustainable Development Goals of improved childhood growth and survival. We applied mucosal genomics to advance our understanding of EED.Methods: The Study of Environmental Enteropathy and Malnutrition (SEEM) followed 416 children from birth to 24 months in a rural district in Pakistan. Biomarkers were measured at 9 months and tested for association with growth at 24 months. The duodenal methylome and transcriptome was determined in 52 undernourished SEEM participants and 42 North American controls and celiac disease patients.Results: After accounting for growth at study entry, circulating IGF-1 and ferritin predicted linear growth, whereas leptin correlated with future weight gain. The EED transcriptome exhibited suppression of antioxidant, detoxification, and lipid metabolism genes, and induction of anti-microbial response, interferon, and lymphocyte activation genes. Relative to celiac disease, suppression of antioxidant and detoxification genes and induction of anti-microbial response genes were EED-specific. At the epigenetic level, EED showed hyper-methylation of epithelial metabolism and barrier function genes, and hypo-methylation of immune response and cell proliferation genes. Duodenal co-expression modules showed association between lymphocyte proliferation and epithelial metabolic genes and histologic severity, fecal energy loss, and wasting (weight-for-length/height Z\u3c-2.0). Leptin was associated with expression of epithelial carbohydrate metabolism and stem cell renewal genes. Immune response genes were attenuated by giardia colonization.Conclusions: Children with reduced circulating IGF-1 are more likely to experience stunting. Leptin and a gene signature for lymphocyte activation and dysregulated lipid metabolism are implicated in wasting, suggesting new approaches for EED refractory to nutritional intervention

Machine learning model demonstrates stunting at birth and systemic inflammatory biomarkers as predictors of subsequent infant growth - A four-year prospective study

Background: Stunting affects up to one-third of the children in low-to-middle income countries (LMICs) and has been correlated with decline in cognitive capacity and vaccine immunogenicity. Early identification of infants at risk is critical for early intervention and prevention of morbidity. The aim of this study was to investigate patterns of growth in infants up through 48 months of age to assess whether the growth of infants with stunting eventually improved as well as the potential predictors of growth.Methods: Height-for-age z-scores (HAZ) of children from Matiari (rural site, Pakistan) at birth, 18 months, and 48 months were obtained. Results of serum-based biomarkers collected at 6 and 9 months were recorded. A descriptive analysis of the population was followed by assessment of growth predictors via traditional machine learning random forest models.Results: Of the 107 children who were followed up till 48 months of age, 51% were stunted (HAZ \u3c - 2) at birth which increased to 54% by 48 months of age. Stunting status for the majority of children at 48 months was found to be the same as at 18 months. Most children with large gains started off stunted or severely stunted, while all of those with notably large losses were not stunted at birth. Random forest models identified HAZ at birth as the most important feature in predicting HAZ at 18 months. Of the biomarkers, AGP (Alpha- 1-acid Glycoprotein), CRP (C-Reactive Protein), and IL1 (interleukin-1) were identified as strong subsequent growth predictors across both the classification and regressor models.Conclusion: We demonstrated that children most children with stunting at birth remained stunted at 48 months of age. Value was added for predicting growth outcomes with the use of traditional machine learning random forest models. HAZ at birth was found to be a strong predictor of subsequent growth in infants up through 48 months of age. Biomarkers of systemic inflammation, AGP, CRP, IL1, were also strong predictors of growth outcomes. These findings provide support for continued focus on interventions prenatally, at birth, and early infancy in children at risk for stunting who live in resource-constrained regions of the world

Promising biomarkers of environmental enteric dysfunction: a prospective cohort study in Pakistani children.

Environmental Enteric Dysfunction (EED), a syndrome characterized by chronic gut inflammation, contributes towards stunting and poor response to enteric vaccines in children in developing countries. In this study, we evaluated major putative biomarkers of EED using growth faltering as its clinical proxy. Newborns (n = 380) were enrolled and followed till 18 months with monthly anthropometry. Biomarkersassociated with gut and systemic inflammation were assessed at 6 and 9 months. Linear mixed effects model was used to determine the associations of these biomarkers with growth faltering between birth and 18 months. Fecal myeloperoxidase (neutrophil activation marker) at 6 months [β = -0.207, p = 0.005], and serum GLP 2 (enterocyte proliferation marker) at 6 and 9 months [6M: β = -0.271, p = 0.035; 9M: β = -0.267, p = 0.045] were associated with decreasing LAZ score. Ferritin at 6 and 9 months was associated with decreasing LAZ score [6M: β = -0.882, p \u3c 0.0001; 9M: β = -0.714, p \u3c 0.0001] and so was CRP [β = -0.451, p = 0.039] and AGP [β = -0.443, p = 0.012] at 9 months. Both gut specific and systemic biomarkers correlated negatively with IGF-1, but only weakly correlated, if at all with each other. We therefore conclude that EED may be contributing directly towards growth faltering, and this pathway is not entirely through the pathway of systemic inflammation