Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty-贫困的本质:我们为什么摆脱不了贫穷

作者：Abhijit V. Banerjee, Esther Duflo

书名：Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty《贫困的本质:我们为什么摆脱不了贫穷》

中文简介：对于穷人贫穷的原因,作者总结了主要三点:
1.穷人缺乏有效避险手段:就像中国农村一直还存在着“育儿防老”的落后观念,大部分地区的穷人的观念也还是停留在这一水平,包括养老、婚姻和贷款均是如此;
2.穷人不做长远规划:穷人往往会忽视教育的重要性,兼职数份工作却不专业,长期处于忙碌高压中却没有时间精力思考;
3.穷人充满执拗和偏见:因为认知水平不足对很多事物都存在偏见,例如觉得接种疫苗没用,并且花销不科学。

英文简介：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.