Poor Economics

"‬The authors talk about understanding the economic lives of the poor and they argue against large,‭ ‬universal solutions.‭ ‬They are very optimistic about finding empirical evidence,‭ ‬both through experiments in policies that work or don’t work and through actually talking to people who are poor.‭ ‬One of the things that comes across so strongly in this book is the centrality of what Banerjee and Duflo call the sense of security‭ – ‬of how much poverty has to do with insecurity and how tremendously important it is,‭ ‬for the people they are talking to,‭ ‬to have a job that is regular and to have the sort of social security arrangements that are taken for granted across much of Europe.‭ ‬Yes,‭ ‬they have and they actually go and talk to people who are really poor,‭ ‬about their lives,‭ ‬their economic lives and their hopes.‭ ‬It did make me think about history as well,‭ ‬because it is called‭ ‬Poor Economics‭ ‬and I wondered why we don’t have more poor history‭ – ‬that is to say history that really is about the economic lives of the poor,‭ ‬rather than about how people have measured poverty or how people have tried to alleviate poverty or policies against poverty.‭ ‬So it was a very inspiring book for me as a historian.‭ ‬As with my first choice,‭ ‬it looks at people who are poor and shows that they also have ideas and shape the economy.‭ I think policies‭ ‬have‭ ‬actually worked in many of the countries that are now most developed.‭ ‬In Britain the poverty that was so terrifying to people in the late‭ ‬19th century was to a great extent got rid of by the policies of the early welfare state as well as by economic growth.‭ ‬Europe is a great success story in reducing poverty.‭ In countries that are still relatively poor,‭ ‬namely China and India,‭ ‬one of the really exciting things that has happened in the last‭ ‬20‭ ‬years is that there are many millions of people who are moving out of poverty.‭ ‬I see that in India,‭ ‬and it is a tremendously important change in the world economy.‭ ‬There are parts of Africa where people are moving out of poverty.‭ ‬Things are changing in terms of which countries it is that are‭ “‬dealing with‭” ‬poverty.‭ ‬In terms of financial influence,‭ ‬India,‭ ‬China and Brazil’s role has increased enormously.‭ ‬In some ways European countries aren’t as confident as they should be about the successes of a hundred years of reforms and of reduction in the poverty of their population."