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Winner of the 2011 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Best Business Book of the Year Award
Billions of government dollars, and thousands of charitable organizations and NGOs, are dedicated to helping the world's poor. But much of their work is based on assumptions that are untested generalizations at best, harmful misperceptions at worst.
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo have pioneered the use of randomized control trials in development economics. Work based on these principles, supervised by the Poverty Action Lab, is being carried out in dozens of countries. Drawing on this and their 15 years of research from Chile to India, Kenya to Indonesia, they have identified wholly new aspects of the behavior of poor people, their needs, and the way that aid or financial investment can affect their lives. Their work defies certain presumptions: that microfinance is a cure-all, that schooling equals learning, that poverty at the level of 99 cents a day is just a more extreme version of the experience any of us have when our income falls uncomfortably low.
This important book illuminates how the poor live, and offers all of us an opportunity to think of a world beyond poverty.
Learn more at www.pooreconomics.com
- Sales Rank: #375919 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Public Affairs
- Published on: 2011-04-26
- Ingredients: Example Ingredients
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.16" h x 6.58" w x 9.47" l, 1.14 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 320 pages
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
The Guardian, April 11, 2011
“[Banerjee and Duflo] offer a refreshingly original take on development, and they are very aware of how they are bringing an entirely new perspective into a subject dominated by big polemics from the likes of Jeffrey Sachs and William Easterly… they are clearly very clever economists and are doing a grand job to enrich their discipline's grasp of complex issues of poverty – so often misunderstood by people who have never been poor.” The Economist, April 22, 2011“In an engrossing new book they draw on some intrepid research and a store of personal anecdotes to illuminate the lives of the 865m people who, at the last count, live on less than 0.99 a day.”
The Economist’s Free Exchange Blog, April 21, 2011
“Let me recommend it… Poor Economics is more than just a compendium of the randomistas' greatest hits. For one thing, it contains some well-observed reporting.”
The Economist’s Free Exchange, April 21, 2011
“TO CUT to the chase: this is the best book about the lives of the poor that I have read for a very, very long time. The research is wide-ranging. Much of it is new. Above all, Banerjee and Duflo take the poorest billion people as they find them. There is no wishful thinking. The attitude is straightforward and honest, occasionally painfully so. And some of the conclusions are surprising, even disconcerting.” Forbes.com, April 25, 2011“a compelling and important read… an honest and readable account about the poor that stands a chance of actually yielding results.” Philanthropy Action, April 25, 2011
“Banerjee and Duflo write exceptionally well, and given that there are two of them, the voice is surprisingly singular. But the real surprise in this book is its humility. Both the authors and the material they pull from are truly formidable, yet Banerjee and Duflo are not really out to make a hard pitch, least of all to die-hard Big Idealists who disagree with them. As such, there is nothing directly confrontational about Poor Economics. They are peeling the onion, not hacking it to pieces.”
“Esther Duflo won the John Bates Clark medal last year for her work on development economics, so I was excited to read her new book with Abhijit Banerjee Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty. It’s a good book. It doesn’t really contain a radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty, but it does try to cut past lame debates over whether or not foreign aid “works” to instead attempt to find ways to actually assess which programs are working, which aren’t, and how to improve those that don’t.” The Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2011“Marvelous, rewarding…’More Than Good Intentions’ and ‘Poor Economics’ are marked by their deep appreciation of the precariousness that colors the lives of poor people as they tiptoe along the margin of survival. But I would give an edge to Mr. Banerjee and Ms. Duflo in this area—the sheer detail and warm sympathy on display reflects a true appreciation of the challenges their subjects face… They have fought to establish a beachhead of honesty and rigor about evidence, evaluation and complexity in an aid world that would prefer to stick to glossy brochures and celebrity photo-ops. For this they deserve to be congratulated—and to be read.”
Financial Times, April 30, 2011
“ ’Poor Economics’ moves beyond all the bluster of development theories crafted in fancy rooms and actually examines at close range the rational economic decisions made by folks living on less than one dollar each day. A lot of aid, the book argues, is hampered for the same reason that some businesses are: ideology, inertia and ignorance. And the book compares the very poor to very rich hedge fund managers -- always wrestling with risk, but with almost no margin for error. "Poor Economics" tells us why micro finance may squash entrepreneurial risk taking and that filling the funding gap for medium-sized businesses is the next big challenge facing all those who want to foster entrepreneurship and spur growth around the world.”
Foreign Affairs“Throughout their book, Banerjee and Duflo examine all facets of the behavior of the poor through this microscopic lens and discuss how certain types of interventions can make things better. They unapologetically propose a solution they acknowledge to be paternalistic: outside interventions by those who know best. But that type of policy makes sense only after detailed investigations of the conditions under which the interventions will occur, and Banerjee and Duflo are careful to tailor their recommendations to the circumstances on the ground.” Bloomberg Business Week
“The ingenuity of these experiments aside, it is the rich and humane portrayal of the lives of the very poor that most impresses. Both books show how those in poverty make sophisticated calculations in the grimmest of circumstances… Books such as these offer a better path forward. They are surely an experiment worth pursuing.” Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 2, 2011
“Here's something Jesus might recommend: Reading the clear, calm and revelatory book "Poor Economics," from Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. It is gloriously instructive, and bracing testimony in itself to the gold standard of the Enlightenment: the scientific method. The authors, both economists at MIT, spent 15 years in the field, running randomized controlled trials to test various approaches to combating poverty. They bring both rigor and humility to a predicament typically riven by ideology and blowhards.”
Financial World (UK),June 2011
“A remarkable work: incisive, scientific, compelling and very accessible, a must-read for advocates and opponents of international aid alike, for interested laymen and dedicated academics… Amartya Sen, fellow Nobel Prize winner Robert Solow and superstar economics author Steven Levitt wholeheartedly endorse this book. I urge you to read it. It will help shape the debate in development economics.”
Amartya Sen
“A marvellously insightful book by two outstanding researchers on the real nature of poverty.”
Steven D. Levitt“This book is a must-read for anyone who cares about world poverty. It has been years since I read a book that taught me so much. ‘Poor Economics’ represents the best that economics has to offer.” Robert Solow“Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo are allergic to grand generalizations about the secret of economic development. Instead they appeal to many local observations and experiments to explore how poor people in poor countries actually cope with their poverty: what they know, what they seem (or don't seem) to want, what they expect of themselves and others, and how they make the choices that they can make. Apparently there are plenty of small but meaningful victories to be won, some through private and some through public action, that together could add up to a large gains for the world's poor, and might even start a ball rolling. I was fascinated and convinced.” Book Dwarf, February 14, 2011
Reilly Media,“Radar” blog, June 27, 2011 “This is possibly the best thing I will read all year, an insightful (and research-backed) book digging into the economics of poverty... Love that the website is so very complementary to the book, and 100% aligned with the ambition to convince and spread the word.”
Publishers Weekly (online), May 2011
“Their empirical approach differs from policy discussions that base support or criticism of aid programs on a broad overview; instead they illuminate many practicable and cost-effective ways to keep children and parents living healthier and more productive lives. An important perspective on fighting poverty.”
The Guardien, June 6, 2011“Duflo and Banerjee tell these stories (of their randomised control trials) in a lovely new book called Poor Economics. As they admit, randomistas cannot answer some big questions – how to tackle food prices, for instance. But through lots of microstudies, they make a subtle case for one big argument: aid really can help poor people, provided the money follows the evidence.” Vancouver Sun, June 11, 2011
Fast Company, June 15, 2011“Fascinating and captivating. Their work reads like a version of Freakonomics for the poor. There are insights into fighting global poverty from the remarkable and vital perspective of those whom we profess to serve…They remind us, I think, of our shared humanity and how at some fundamental levels we really do think alike.” IndianExpress.com, June 18, 2011“This is a welcome shift in methodology as it implicitly concedes the need to combine social science with hard economics.” Outlook India, June 25, 2011“It vividly, sensitively and rigorously brings alive the dilemmas of the poor as economic agents in a variety of contexts, whether as consumers or risk-takers. There are splendid chapters on a variety of topics that affect the poor: food, health, education, savings, micro-credit, insurance, risk and even some cursory observations on political behaviour.”
DNA (Daily News Analysis), India, September 24, 2011“The book is full of such interesting insights and is worth reading for anyone who really wants to know why the poor of the world behave the way they do. And things are not always as bad as they are actually made out to be.”
Hindustan Times, September 24, 2011“[A] remarkably noses-on-the-ground book” Livemint.com October 4, 2011“There is no better place to solve the problem than the place where the problem is. One of the better economics books this year, Poor Economics, is by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo who found economic solutions to problems by being in India, Indonesia, Kenya, etc.” James Pressley, Bloomberg“An enlightening look at what randomized control trials, such as those used to assess new medicines, tell us about the behavior of impoverished people -- and how to help them. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology economists describe the rational motivations that underpin “irrational” decisions. We meet, for example, Moroccan villagers who find money to buy televisions, DVD players and cell phones when they can’t afford enough food.” Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, PRI’s Marketplace
The New York Times, May 19, 2011
“Randomized trials are the hottest thing in the fight against poverty, and two excellent new books have just come out by leaders in the field. One is “Poor Economics,” by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo… These terrific books move the debate to the crucial question: What kind of aid works best?” The Guardian, May 18, 2011
“Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo's book, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, is making waves in development circles. Beyond the strong focus on randomised control trials, the book distinguishes itself by wading into issues on which the development community has often ignored or made uninformed guesses. These include the rationale behind the decisions made by the poor, whether they make the "best" decisions available, and how policymakers should respond.” Matthew Yglesias, May 7, 2011
“This new book by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo eschews the ideology of both the right and the left, and focuses on what measurable evidence has to say about the often-conflicting myths that dominate discussion of international development. The book is unusual, perhaps unique, in that the authors took a lot of time to talk to poor people about what they think and what they want.”
“They have a compelling argument that antipoverty programs can be effective if properly designed, and illustrate ways to test them to make sure they actually work. The writing style is accessible and engaging, but it’s not dumbed down or over-simplified. The complexity of the subject means that this book is taking me longer to read than other books, but I’ve found the effort genuinely rewarding.” Kirkus Review, April 15, 2011
“Highly decorated economists Banerjee and Duflo (Economics/Massachusetts Institute of Technology) relay 15 years of research into a smart, engaging investigation of global poverty—and why we're failing to eliminate it…A refreshingly clear, well-structured argument against the standard approach to poverty, this book, while intended for academics and those working on the ground, should provide an essential wake-up call for any reader.”
About the Author
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee was educated in Kolkata, Delhi and Cambridge, MA. He is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at MIT. He is the recipient of many honors and awards, including most recently 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 the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT. She studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, and at MIT. She is a recipient of several important awards, including a MacArthur "genius" award (2009) and the John Bates Clark medal awarded annually to the best American economist under forty (2010). In 2003, Banerjee and Duflo co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), which they continue to direct.
Most helpful customer reviews
153 of 157 people found the following review helpful.
Refreshing and Powerful Vision of Anti-Poverty Policy
By Herbert Gintis
The authors identify three major approaches to dealing with world poverty, suggest that whatever their virtues and faults, there is a very piecemeal and pragmatic approach through which significant gains can be made without addressing the systemic obstacles identified by the three approaches. Their analysis is brilliant, focused, rooted in first-rate data sets, yet rich in social detail and anecdotal vignettes. I believe there are probably right, and their approach deserves to be widely studied an evaluated by policy makers in the advanced and developing countries.
The dominant school of thought is probably the supply-side theory, most visibly represented by Jeffrey Sachs (the authors call him a "supply wallah"). According to this theory, the poor are poor because they lack money and resources, and there is a "poverty trap" such that investment in productive technologies must be very large in order to have a positive and sustainable effect. Because poor individuals, and even poor countries, lack the capacity to finance such investments, they are trapped in a low-level economic equilibrium. For this reason, Sachs and the supply theorists advise that the rich countries transfer a large lump-sum amount of money to a poor country, so it can get over the poverty-trap hump.
A second salient school of thought is the demand-side theory, represented by William Easterly and many others. Demand-siders (the authors call them "demand wallahs") believes that the poor are poor because they do not want to undertake what would be necessary to move out of poverty and there is no poverty trap. Thus, if you throw money and resources to the poor, they consume it immediately rather than using it for long-term betterment.
The third school of thought is the corruption school, represented by Acemoglu and Robinson, as expounded in the book Why Nations Fail. According to this theory, countries remain poor because their governments are predatory, exploiting the citizenry by refusing to make investments in productive infrastructure, by direction all profits to cronies, and by permitting rampant corruption that renders creative entrepreneurship unprofitable. According to this school, to which I admit to being very favorable, the supply wallahs are wrong because the resources throw into the system will be appropriate by the rich and powerful, and the demand wallahs are wrong because the poor are actively maintained by the oligarchy in their position of servitude.
The authors are very insightful and balanced in presenting the views of these three schools and the evidence that supports these various positions. They also clearly explain their mutual critiques. For instance, the supply wallahs claim that states are predatory and corruption is rampant only because the country is so poor, and the demand wallahs claim that when the people want to move out of poverty, they will reform their governments. I find these defenses of supply and demand wallahs rather tendentious, leaving the corruptions school as the overall most plausible school.
I think it is fair to say that Banerjee and Duflo have little sympathy for demand and supply wallahs, but considerable respect for the corruption theory. Their own position is that there are virtually always ways to productively intervene to pull a significant fraction of people out of poverty. The authors, who have collected huge amounts of data and interviewed many poor people from around the world, make the following argument.
Most important, the poor in a poor country have about the same array of preferences and capacities as that of the human population as a whole, and humans are substantively rational in making decisions that affect their lives. However, the poor have a lot fewer resources than the well-off, they lack information and skills provided to the well-off, and lack access to such public goods as clean water and consumables subject to food and drug regulations.
The poor are therefore extremely heterogeneous. Microfinance organizations like the Grameen Bank therefore provide a general path to affluences, simply because only a fraction of the population has the will and ability to be successful entrepreneurs. On the other hand, entrepreneurs often fail several times before finally becoming successful, so the authors advise an expanded microfinance industry that is more tolerant of the sorts of behaviors that may involve short-term losses, but lead to long-run successes. The authors conclude that we must consider microfinance policies as extremely successful and worthy of following, even though it is not panacea for the abolition of poverty.
Because the poor lack access to social services freely available to the non-poor, the authors advocate such measures as providing clean water to poor villages and adding nutrients, such as iron, to staple foods. This, they argue, is not charity but simply the extension to poor of services already supplied to the rest of society.
Concerning education, the authors believe that poor parents are usually very eager to have their children educated, although they may lack the means of enrolling their children in schools or providing for their transportation to and from school. However, too often the content of schooling is determined by what is good for the more affluent classes, so poor children are led voluntarily to quit school. The authors advise that the content of education take into account the preferences and culture of the target population.
I cannot do justice to the beauty and intricacy of the argument developed in this book. The authors' main point is that we must look closely at the details of the lives of the poor in order to develop policies to help people to pull themselves out of poverty. This is neither demand or supply wallah-ism, and as they repeatedly stress, real progress can be made even in a society whose government provides a poor environment for economic development.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Amazing introduction to how poor people actually live - Don't really agree with use of RCTs
By J_Nasielski
As a development professional (i.e. someone who is paid to help poor people in poor countries) I'm very happy to see how the experiences and theories of the authors meld with my own experiences of how poor people in developing countries conduct their lives and organize their livelihoods. As such, I'd say the book serves as an excellent introduction to the economic lives of the poor (although their is another book entitled exactly that, also excellent) and what type of development interventions are likely to work.
The authors advocate for a more measurable approach to development: conduct development projects like scientific experiments to see what work's and what doesn't. In the jargon, this is known as using Randomized Control Trials (RCTs). The authors are very reasonable and don't see RCT's as a cure to all ills, but a step on the path to making development projects a bit more effective. The book functions as an introduction to the use of RCTs in development projects
There are many objections to the effectiveness of RCTs. But the major one is this: In most scientific experiments, an experiment can be replicated by someone else doing the exact same thing and end up with the exact same result. This is called, in the jargon, external validity, and is necessary for science to be,well, science. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee of external validity in international development. There are simply too many unknown unknowns and uncontrollable variables that a successful development project in one place and time has no guarantee of working in another. So, if this makes any sense, RCTs are not very effective in improving aid effectiveness.
In my own experience, there are three practical problems with implementing RCTs: 1) You need to have very smart, well trained people involved from the beginning to ensure the construction of the experiment is valid. This is not always possible. 2) These things are very very expensive to do. 3) Development organizations that do the implementing of projects don't want their projects evaluated since they see it as a way to cut funding.
Insofar as RCTs can be used as an organizational learning tool, there are cheaper methods of M&E (monitoring and evaluation, the jargon again) that can accomplish just that.
All in all, a very good read. The book is obviously meant for a wide audience and is easy reading. As someone who knew alot about what was introduced, I still found it worthwhile to read.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
An Excellent Primer to Global Poverty
By mikephd80
This book is a treasure trove of information about global poverty. I came into the book with a host of naïve assumptions about why poverty exists and what can be done to stop it, but the authors referenced a plethora of research studies that obliterated my ill-conceived notions about poverty and provided me with a solid foundation of knowledge upon which I can build.
Prior to this book, I held a number of beliefs that I simply assumed were common sense. For example, I had assumed that if you offered free food to someone who is consuming barely enough calories to survive that the overall amount of calories they consume would increase. Apparently this is not the case-- if you give them free rice, they will take the money they used to spend on rice and instead spend it on more expensive, unhealthier food (or worse yet, something like tobacco). Thus, even if everyone in developed countries purchased food and gave it to the people in poorer nations this would not solve world hunger.
In chapter after chapter the authors bring up an issue faced by the world's poor, offer up the existing theories about the problem, point to research that sheds light on why the theories or current efforts fail to address the problem, and suggest solutions that we have reason to believe would work based on the findings of various research studies. The issues faced by the poor are wide-ranging and the authors do an excellent job trying to cover them all. Here are the main issues covered (a full chapter is devoted to each one):
1. Hunger (why poor people are not getting enough calories)
2. Health (why poor people don't try harder to get their kids de-wormed, vaccinated, etc.)
3. Family size (why poor people choose to have large families even though it is difficult to support more children)
4. Education (why poor people don't invest in all of their kids' education)
5. Risk/insurance (why poor people incur so much risk yet aren't insuring themselves against it)
6. Borrowing/microfinance (why microfinance isn't going to solve poverty and why borrowing is still an issue for some)
7. Saving (why poor people aren't saving)
8. Entrepreneurship (why poor people aren't all the great "entrepreneurs" that microfinance makes them out to be)
9. Politics/institutions/corruption (why poor people can see improvements in their lives even with corrupt institutions)
Each chapter begins with a difficult question which might seem to have an intuitive answer but does not; then the authors point to the results of research studies that shed light on the answer proceed to explain why the problem has not been solved if we know why it is occurring. For example, the chapter on saving begins with the following question: can poor people actually save money? Many people would immediately answer "of course not" simply based on the fact that the people we're talking about are poor. However, the authors provide convincing evidence that shows poor people are in fact capable of saving. This begs the question, if they can save, and it would be in their interest to do so (to provide a safety net for the enormous risk they face in their lives-- e.g., a family members becomes sick and can't work), then why don't they save? Are they simply lazy, short-sighted, and incompetent as we are told in the press? As you might imagine, the answer is not so simple (or condescending). Poor people don't save for a variety of reasons. First off, many of the world's poor don't have easy access to savings accounts. Banks are highly regulated and thus there is a significant cost involved in serving a client-- so why would a bank make an effort to cater to poor communities where they'll receive very little income from their customers to compensate for the costs they're incurring in offering banking services? Furthermore, it is easier for middle-class or wealthy people to save, not simply because they have more income but because the system makes it incredibly simple: for example, many people work for an employer that sets up a 401k plan for them and offers to match funds and deduct funds from your paycheck without you having to do anything. Most of the world's poor do not have such a simple option for saving-- they must exercise willpower week after week to overcome the temptation to spend (which we all have, poor or not), whereas the rest of us can just tell an employer once that we want to contribute to our 401k plan and that's the end of it. The authors even told stories of women who were taking out a loan at 24% interest and then saving the money in an account that only paid 4% interest. This seems incredibly foolish, so the authors inquired as to the women's motivations. It turns out they were doing this because this would force them to save-- having to repay the repay the loan would act as a disciplining mechanism. Essentially they were trying to force themselves to save because they didn't have a 401k account that would just automatically withdraw the money. They face the same temptations that we all do, they just don't have an easy means of overcoming them.
But the authors don't simply point out problems and throw up their hands in desperation-- they offer concrete solutions to each problem. Not all the solutions are equally convincing and the authors are the first to admit there is no "magic bullet" but they go a long way toward providing a framework for how we might think about solving global poverty in the next one hundred years. For example, in the chapter that deals with the enormous amount of risk the poor face (due to crop failures, health problems, etc.) they ask why the poor don't simply obtain insurance. The answer is complicated and has to do with moral hazard, adverse selection, and fraud, the combination of which has made it difficult for a "market" in microinsurance to develop in the same way we've had an innovation in microfinance. Thus, the authors suggest that governments step in and help create such a market by providing subsidies for insurance premiums. Before you throw up your hands and yell "that's socialism!" bear in mind that they cite previous instances of such subsidies and how they led to dramatic increases in the number of poor people who were insured.
There is no easy way to solve global poverty, as the world's poor face a number of problems that seem intractable. Yet when we examine each of these problems by looking at how the poor actually behave and how they respond to incentives, we can begin to develop a framework for how we might solve each of these problems and reach a point where poverty is a thing of the past. But before we can do anything to eradicate poverty, we need to understand why it exists, why it is self-perpetuating, and what can be done to stop it. This is the function of this book, and it excels on all fronts.
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