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The main objective of this paper is to investigate the factors having the most influence on the alleviation of poverty amongst the households adopting microfinance in Zambia. Ninety nine (n=99) respondents were randomly and purposively selected from amongst 340 microfinance adopters of the so-called Micro Bankers Trust programme operating a microfinance business in the Makululu Compound of Kabwe, Zambia. Socio-demographic primary data were collected through face-to-face interviews based on a semi-structured questionnaire instrument. The data were entered into an excel spreadsheet for analysis. The descriptive data were thereafter exported and fitted to an empirical model. The descriptive results revealed that the majority of the respondents were married, unemployed, fairly educated younger women from larger-sized poor households who drew their household income mainly from microfinance activities. The majority of the respondents thought microfinance had improved their well-being in some crucial areas. The results of the empirical model found that some respondents were indeed alleviated from poverty through microfinance. Conclusion drawn in this paper is that microfinance does alleviate poverty of the poor. 

This article reflects on social welfare system and governance of housing markets from an end-user perspective. The article criticallyanalyses the way in which social welfare has correlated to unsustainable development and created self entitlement behaviours andattitudes in the South African low income housing market. The phenomenon was demonstrable by empirical research whosefindings confirmed an existence of an association between a fully subsidized social housing model (as underpinned by South Africa’s social welfare) and propensity to default on mortgages. The study found that the risk of default by homeowners in the low income housing market in South Africa is influenced by government’s housing grant model. In other words, the research established that the principle of servicing a mortgaged starter property (that is almost similar to a government free house by both structure and design) is not universally accepted by homeowners of these mortgaged houses. The unintended consequences are that the system has created indefinite expectations that potentially could; (i) erode the country’s balance sheet; (ii) add to non-payment behaviour; (iii) pressurize the economic and credit systems; (iv) propagate entitlement attitudes and mindsets; (v) create social instability and (v) widened the country’s balance of payment deficits.