Poor Economics Ebook Free Download
Germana Layng
Poor Economics lays out a middle ground between purely market-based solutions to global poverty, versus "grand development plans." It rejects broad generalizations and formulaic thinking. Instead, the authors help to understand how the poor really think and make decisions on such matters as education, healthcare, savings, entrepreneurship, and a variety of other issues. They advocate the use of observation, using rigorous randomized controlled testing on five continents, and most importantly by actually listening to what the poor have to say. Often the answers are startling and counter-intuitive, but make the utmost sense when circumstances are understood. In addition, the universal traps of Ignorance, Ideology, and Inertia often stymie policies and institutions, but may be avoided.
At six, Abhijit knew where the poor lived. They lived in little ramshackle houses behind his home in Calcutta. Their children always seemed to have lots of time to play, and they could beat him at any sport: When he went down to play marbles with them, the marbles would always end up in the pockets of their ragged shorts. He was jealous.
We are academics, and like most academics we formulate theories and stare at data. But the nature of the work we do has meant that we have also spent months, spread over many years, on the ground working with NGO (nongovernmental organization) activists and government bureaucrats, health workers and microlenders. This has taken us to the back alleys and villages where the poor live, asking questions, looking for data. This book would not have been written but for the kindness of the people we met there. We were always treated as guests even though, more often than not, we had just walked in. Our questions were answered with patience, even when they made little sense; many stories were shared with us.
Back in our offices, remembering these stories and analyzing the data, we were both fascinated and confused, struggling to fit what we were hearing and seeing into the simple models that (often Western or Western-trained) professional development economists and policy makers use to think about the lives of the poor. More often than not, the weight of the evidence forced us to reassess or even abandon the theories that we brought with us. But we tried to not do so before we understood exactly why they were failing and how to adapt them to better describe the world. This book comes out of that interchange; it represents our attempt to knit together a coherent story of how really poor people live their lives.
"Banker to the Poor is Muhammad Yunus's memoir of how he decided to change his life in order to help the world's poor. In it he traces the intellectual and spiritual journey that led him to fundamentally rethink the economic relationship between rich and poor, and the challenges he and his colleagues faced in founding Grameen. He also provides wise, hopeful guidance for anyone who would like to join him in "putting homelessness and destitution in a museum so that one day our children will visit it and ask how we could have allowed such a terrible thing to go on for so long." The definitive history of micro-credit direct from the man that conceived of it, Banker to the Poor is necessary and inspirational reading for anyone interested in economics, public policy, philanthropy, social history, and business." Banker To The Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty
"American individuals and institutions spent billions of dollars to ease global poverty and accomplished almost nothing. At last we have a realistic way forward. Presenting innovative and successful development interventions around the globe, Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel show how empirical analysis coupled with the latest thinking in behavioral economics can make a profound difference. From Kenya, where teenagers reduced their risk of contracting AIDS by having more unprotected sex with partners their own age, to Mexico, where giving kids a one-dollar deworming pill boosted school attendance better than paying their families to send them,More Than Good Intentions reveals how to invest those billions far more effectively and begin transforming the well-being of the world." More Than Good Intentions: Improving the Ways the World's Poor Borrow, Save, Farm, Learn, and Stay Healthy
"Amartya Sen won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Economics, and has now introduced an essential and paradigm-altering framework for understanding economic development - for both rich and poor - in the twenty-first century. Freedom, Sen argues, is both the end and most efficient means of sustaining economic life and the key to securing the general welfare of the world's entire population. Releasing the idea of individual freedom from association with any particular historical, intellectual, political, or religious tradition, Sen clearly demonstrates its current applicability and possibilities. In the new global economy, where, despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies elementary freedoms to vast numbers--perhaps even the majority of people--he concludes, it is still possible to practically and optimistically restain a sense of social accountability." Development as Freedom
"The poorest people in the world do not just survive--they thrive lavishly. They enjoy rich family relationships, build vibrant communities and exude deep faith. They have much to teach us about life and inspire us with their ingenuity, persistence, generosity and self-reliance. Mark Lutz has visited families living in cardboard huts, hiked dusty paths to isolated African villages, and tiptoed across putrid open sewers on makeshift bridges. UnPoverty relays those astonishing encounters with unforgettable people: desperately poor, yet abundantly rich. When we hear about the billions of people living on a few dollars a day, do we visualize what that means? These stories put individual faces on unimaginable statistics and bring their reality to life. You may even see yourself in them." UnPoverty: Rich Lessons from the Working Poor
"In the universally acclaimed and award-winning The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier reveals that fifty failed states--home to the poorest one billion people on Earth--pose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century. The book shines much-needed light on this group of small nations, largely unnoticed by the industrialized West, that are dropping further and further behind the majority of the world's people, often falling into an absolute decline in living standards. Collier has spent a lifetime working to end global poverty. In The Bottom Billion, he offers real hope for solving one of the great humanitarian crises facing the world today." The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
"Nearly forty percent of humanity lives on an average of two dollars a day or less. If you've never had to survive on an income so small, it is hard to imagine. How would you put food on the table, afford a home, and educate your children? How would you handle emergencies and old age? Every day, more than a billion people around the world must answer these questions.Portfolios of the Poor is the first book to systematically explain how the poor find solutions to their everyday financial problems." Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live on $2 a Day
Description: Billions of government dollars, and thousands of charitable organizations and NGOs, are dedicated to helping the world's poor. But much of the work they do is based on assumptions that are untested generalizations at best, flat out harmful misperceptions at worst. The authors have pioneered the use of randomized control trials in development economics. Work based on these principles, supervised by the Poverty Action Lab at MIT, is being carried out in dozens of countries. Their work transforms 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. Throughout, the authors emphasize that life for the poor is simply not like life for everyone else: it is a much more perilous adventure, denied many of the cushions and advantages that are routinely provided to the more affluent. A marvelously insightful book by two outstanding researchers on the real nature of poverty.
Malaria risk has always been geographically specific, as shown in Figure 1. Intensive malaria is confined to the tropical and subtropical zone. Poverty is also geographically specific. As shown in Figure 2, poor countries predominate in the same regions as malaria. Almost all of the rich countries are outside the bounds of intensive malaria.
The question is whether these dramatic correlations mean that malaria causes poverty and low growth. We will address this question in 3 ways. First, we consider the correlation of malaria with income levels after controlling for other factors that are likely to affect the world distribution of income, such as geography, history, and policy. Second, we discuss the determinants of malaria risk. Unlike other important diseases in poor countries caused by deficient living conditions, such as diarrhea, tuberculosis, and schistosomiasis, malaria is not primarily a consequence of poverty; its extent and severity are largely determined by climate and ecology. Third, we explore the impact of malaria on subsequent economic growth. This provides the most direct evidence of the continuing importance of malaria as a cause of poverty.
The coincidence of severe malaria and low incomes could be due to many factors besides malaria itself. It could be a general effect of the tropics caused by poor soils, low agricultural productivity, or tropical diseases other than malaria. It may capture geographical trade barriers; many malarial countries are landlocked and far from the major centers of world trade. It could be an accident of history. Many malarial countries were colonies until recently, and the terrible misfortunes of colonization may linger, keeping incomes low. Malaria could simply be a proxy for Africa, which may be poor for other reasons, such as weak institutions, poor economic policies, or ethnic conflict.
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