The Economic Lives of the Poor (Banerjee & Duflo)

Details

Photo

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Name

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Field

Development economics

Core idea

Household-level data on how people living under about $2/day actually spend, earn, and cope.

Year

2007

How dense

Medium – lots of tables but super readable narrative.

My take

Kills a bunch of lazy stereotypes in one shot. You walk away realizing “the poor” is not one category and policy takes need to stop acting like it is.