Winner of the 2011 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Best Business Book of the Year Award, Billions of dollars have been donated by both governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to help the world's impoverished. Unfortunately, much of this assistance is based on assumptions that are untested at best and harmful misperceptions at worst.
In a recent issue of Nature, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, both of Columbia University, announce the publication of their new book Poor Economics. The book is based on their groundbreaking work, which has been supported by the Poverty Action Lab in Washington, D.C, and is being replicated in dozens of developing countries around the world.
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo have been pioneers in applying randomized control trials to development economics. Their work, which draws on 15 years of research from Chile to India, Kenya to Indonesia, has helped reveal new aspects of the behavior of poor people, their needs, and how aid or financial investment can affect their lives.
Their work has challenged certain popular misconceptions about poverty. They have shown that microfinance is not a cure-all; that schooling does not always equal learning; and that levels of poverty below $0.99 (or 99 cents a day) are not just more extreme versions of experiences we may all know when our income falls uncomfortably low. In other words, their research has helped us understand that the poor are not simply victims of their circumstances.
With this important new book, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo have shed light on how the poor live and offer us all an opportunity to think about a world beyond poverty. To learn more about the book and its implications for policy makers and practitioners around the world, visit www.pooreconomics.com.
