The experience of the Indian fruit sellers and the Kenyan farmers suggests that a lot of people fail to save even when they have access to good saving opportunities. This suggests that barriers to savings are not all externally imposed. Part of the problem comes from human psychology. Most of us have some memory of trying to explain to an irate parent that we were just sitting next to the cookie jar and the cookies somehow vanished. We knew eating the cookies would mean trouble, but the temptation was too strong. As we discussed in Chapter 3 on preventive health, the human brain processes the
...more
