Poor Economics: Rethinking Poverty & the Ways to End it

by Abhijit V. Banerjee

Nancy Qian showed that when we compare children born in the post- and pre-reform periods, the number of girls in the tea plantation regions (hilly and rainy) increased, but it went down in the regions that were more suitable for orchards.39 In regions that were not particularly suitable to either tea or orchards, where agricultural income increased across the board without favoring either gender, the gender composition of children did not change. What all of this underscores is the violence, active and passive, subsumed within the functioning of the traditional family. This was, until fairly recently, ignored by most (though not all) economists, who preferred to leave that black box closed. Yet most societies rely on the goodwill of the parents to make sure that children get fed, schooled, socialized, and taken care of more generally. Given that these are the same parents who contrive to let their little girls die, how much faith should we place in their ability to get this done effectively?

Economics at play