Poor Economics: The Surprising Truth about Life on Less Than $1 a Day

(Paperback)

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An eye-opening investigation into life below the poverty line that turns received thinking on its head Winner of the FT Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2011 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.

Reviews

Poor Economics is making waves . . . refreshingly original, wonderfully insightful . . . an entirely new perspective * Guardian *
A marvellously insightful book by two outstanding researchers on the real nature of poverty -- Amartya Sen
It has been years since I read a book that taught me so much -- Steven D. Levitt
A page-turner about the micro-economics of aid policy might not sound too probable, but that's what [Banerjee and Duflo] have written, and it is a truly remarkable book . . . unmistakably contemporary, written beautifully * Guardian *
A compelling and important read * Forbes *
An engrossing new book * Economist *
Marvellous . . . they deserve to be congratulated, and to be read * Wall Street Journal *

Author Bio

Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at MIT. He is the recipient of many awards, including the inaugural Infosys Prize in 2009, and has been an honorary advisor to many organizations including the World Bank and the Government of India. Esther Duflo is Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at MIT. She has received numerous honors and prizes including a John Bates Clark Medal for the best American economist under 40 in 2010, a MacArthur 'genius' Fellowship in 2009. Together with Abhijit Banerjee and Sendhil Mullainathan of Harvard University, she founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab in 2003.