Synopses & Reviews
Why do the poor borrow to save? Why do they miss out on free life-saving immunizations, but pay for unnecessary drugs? In Poor Economics, Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two practical visionaries working toward ending world poverty, answer these questions from the ground. In a book the Wall Street Journal called marvelous, rewarding, the authors tell how the stress of living on less than 99 cents per day encourages the poor to make questionable decisions that feed--not fight--poverty. The result is a radical rethinking of the economics of poverty that offers a ringside view of the lives of the world's poorest, and shows that creating a world without poverty begins with understanding the daily decisions facing the poor.
Synopsis
FROM THE WINNERS OF THE 2019 NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS
'Refreshingly original, wonderfully insightful . . . an entirely new perspective' Guardian
Why would a man in Morocco who doesn't have enough to eat buy a television?
Why do the poorest people in India spend 7 percent of their food budget on sugar?
Does having lots of children actually make you poorer?
This eye-opening book overturns the myths about what it is like to live on very little, revealing the unexpected decisions that millions of people make every day. Looking at some of the most paradoxical aspects of life below the poverty line - why the poor need to borrow in order to save, why incentives that seem effective to us may not be for them, and why, despite being more risk-taking than high financiers, they start businesses but rarely grow them - Banerjee and Duflo offer a new understanding of the surprising way the world really works.
Winner of the FT Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2011