Abstract:
Poverty is a harsh and undesired phenomenon in mankind. Reducing, if possible eradicating
poverty is unquestionable. Microfinance programs have been considered as one of the main
instruments in poverty reduction in recent development agenda. It is a means to support the
marginalized active poor of the society. The main objective of this study was to investigate
empirically the impact of Omo microfinance institutions on poverty reduction at
household level referencing Wachamo surrounding Omo microfinance institution. Mainly
primary data was collected through structured questionnaire from 200 households by selecting
90 OMFIs participants and 110 non-OMFI participants from two sub cities using random
sampling methods. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to assess the impact of OMFI on
household income, expenditure, saving and asset accumulation value. The estimation ATT
results from PSM output show that participation in OMFI had brought significant impact on
household income, saving and aggregate expenditure and asset accumulation value. Further,
sensitivity analysis test on estimated ATT result shows effect of MFIs was insensitive to
unobservable selection bias; even the two group allowed to differ in their odds of being treated
up to 220% in terms of unobserved in which implying that being pure effect of program
intervention. Thereby, improving living standard of participant and as far as ATT result was the
only effect of intervention, thus microfinance intervention reduce poverty at household level. It
can be recommended that, importance of microfinance in poverty reduction is of immense benefit
to the participant households in study areas. Therefore, there is the need to help sustain it and
help its growt
