Poor Economics: Rethinking Poverty & the Ways to End it

by Abhijit V. Banerjee

After spending some time in that Moroccan village, it was easy to see why he thought that. Life can be quite boring in a village. There is no movie theater, no concert hall, no place to sit and watch interesting strangers go by. And not a lot of work, either. Oucha and two of his neighbors, who were with him during the interview, had worked about seventy days in agriculture and about thirty days in construction that year. For the rest of the year, they took care of their cattle and waited for jobs to materialize. This left plenty of time to watch television. These three men all lived in small houses without water or sanitation. They struggled to find work, and to give their children a good education. But they all had a television, a parabolic antenna, a DVD player, and a cell phone. Generally, it is clear that things that make life less boring are a priority for the poor.