Self-Help Group as a Pathway to Sustainable Livelihood Development and Women's Empowerment: Empirical Evidence through the SDG Lens

Abstract

Background: Self Help Groups (SHGs) occupy a special place among the institutional arrangements to include economically marginalised women in the fold of formal financial structures. This is a place that is defined as much by lived necessity as by conscious policy design. These groups have quietly built a track record in India and much of the developing world of fostering savings discipline, credit access and collective decision-making, a track record that individual-level interventions have found hard to match. However, despite their scale and visibility, there is a significant gap in the literature, very few studies have attempted to map SHG outcomes to the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through rigorous primary data collection and advanced quantitative methods.
Objective: The main objective of the study is to evaluate the socio-economic impact of the membership of Self-Help Group on women’s livelihood in terms of its impact on income, savings and access to credit and, also to evaluate its role in strengthening women’s empowerment through sustained participation. The study also aims to examine the contribution of SHGs in achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 1, SDG 5, SDG 8 and SDG 10) and the influence of institutional and governance factors on the overall effectiveness and sustainability of SHG initiatives.
Methodology: Field surveys were conducted with 250 women SHG members selected from three districts purposively selected through a stratified random sampling procedure. Data were collected using a five thematic area based structured pre-tested questionnaire. Descriptive and inferential analyses were conducted using SPSS v.29. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS 4 was employed to test the relationships between latent constructs and mediation pathways.
Findings: Households in SHGs enjoy a mean income gain of 38.4%, significant improvements in credit access, and increased decision-making agency. PLS-SEM confirms that women’s empowerment is a strong mediator between group participation and SDG alignment (β = 0.54, p < .001), explaining over half of the total effect. The quality of institutional governance has a strong moderating effect on livelihood outcomes.
Conclusion: There is evidence to suggest that SHGs are a cost-effective and contextually grounded vehicle for multidimensional sustainable development. The most actionable policy levers identified are strengthening governance within groups, sustaining membership over time and integrating SDG-aligned performance indicators into programme monitoring.