Book review
Book Review: Poor Economics - A Radical Rethink of the Way to Fight Global Poverty
The book primarily focuses on the reasons of poverty and how to alleviate it from the world. The book discusses various topics and carries out program in different villages selected randomly . it also discusses how they are facing the problem of poverty and the measures taken to eradicate it.
The book also discuses about the policies that are implemented in eradicating poverty but are total failure. This is due to lack of understanding the exact reason of poverty. The main purpose of removing poverty from the world can be achieved if carefully the problem is dealt with by the evidences that are provided. The book not only provides the details about the different aids but also about the instances when some betterment has happened by the aid or in cases where the aid is failure for the poor people. It is guide for the policy makers , philanthropists, activists and everyone who wants a world without poverty through practical scenarios.
Though the book have received many prizes and excellent reviews bit the question arises will this book radically change the attitude an policies towards poverty eradication in poor countries. The authors of the book founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Laboratory (J-PAL) in 2003 with a network of five offices around the world and have also used randomized control trials (RCTs) to implement anti poverty policies that is based on proper research rather than just a suggestion. The researchers did 240 experiments in forty countries in the year 2010 and help us understand the different reason of poverty, what are the solutions, whether people are in poverty tarps and how to help them to come of this trap. The authors have mentioned that poor people are not stupid but they are not properly informed about the benefits that people with higher income knows and enjoys the benefit. These poor people struggle a lot and are misguided by the corrupt people who take money from them. The authors point out that the poor people bear more responsibility for their lives than the rich but are deprived of the basic amenities of life.
The policy and the recommendations that the book focuses on are discussed below.
One of the important policy is improving children's health. The quality of treatment that the children receive is to be properly regulated. Preventing education is another challenge. RCTs show that textbooks only seems to matter that the children are doing well. But the parents are bearing the cost of education. So the government should provide make a policy to send the children to school. Conditional cash transfers also exist in some countries but this is not required much as cash is more important for the poor families. The misconception that poor people sleep at night without having full meal at night is an interesting fact that is cleared in the book .the reason is that the poor people does not spend all their ,money of food. The report that the poor people are hungry in one case that are not spending enough money of food. While in case of pregnant women, the poor nutrition in the womb and infancy is leading to economic damage of life. So government should change the food policy helping the vulnerable groups. The aid should reach with the help of different agencies to the needy i.e. to the pregnant women, new born babies and not to the poor people who have the ability to earn their daily bread but spend on something other than food . The problem of money lenders who charge high interest rates and the problem of microcredit movement which has reached only to few people should be properly managed and implemented . These are real problems that need proper regulation to eradicate poverty.
Limitation
Will the above recommendations remove poverty from the world? The answer is ambiguous because there are limitation of these trials based on the above policies done by the RCTs. The first reason is that the importance is more towards the education of children. Though education is important for the poor people so that they are not fooled but it will affect the public education system and reduce the welfare of the society. They have focused more on social engineering as a driver of development. The corruption that is prevalent in the implementation of the poverty eradication policies will deprive these poor people from their needs. Without proper intervention it is not possible to remove the corruption. Though the methods used in RTCs provide an in depth knowledge about the reason of the poverty and their problems but does not solve the problem of corruption. The results RCTs use a very specific so evaluation is conducted on one sample. The program is to be implemented in such a way that it is replicated but a slightly different program will have tally different result.
The book deals with the problem and the solutions but it does not provide a summary at the end of the topics discussed. It discusses the anti poverty policies but does not provide details about policies which are to be discarded and which are effective. But this is one of the best book that is well written on the development of economics for a long time.
Works Cited
Banerjee, Abhijit &.Duflo ,Esther A Radical Rethink of the Way to Fight Global Poverty. New York :Public affairs, 2011.
Thirlwall, A.P. “Review Article.” University of Kent. UK https://www.kent.ac.uk/economics/document/tt/Poor-economics-review-article.pdf
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