Researches shows that socio-economic status (SES) correlates with social capital, and groups with low SES, usually have less opportunity to advance their lives. Women’s empowerment and self-confidence are primarily determined by their resources and their ability to make social and economic decisions. Microfinance provided by self-help groups aims to empower women and create social capital. The study examines the change in socio economic status of the SHG members and its subsequent impact on the social capital by analyzing randomly collected responses of 392 SHG members from the state of Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. SPSS is employed for statistical analysis. The Mann-Whitney U test, the Kruskal- Wallis H test, and the Jonckheeree Terpstra test have been applied judiciously to test hypotheses both before and after data where ever possible.
Keywords: Micro-Finance, Social Capital, Women Empowerment, self-help groups, socio-economic empowerment
