Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury > Recent Status Updates

"What my father was doing in there was said to be very important—the important things that men did, too important for females to meddle with because they had smaller brains that were incapable of thinking large thoughts, according to Aunt Vidala, who taught us Religion."

"my mother said that books were decorations, like vases of flowers."

"Though we girls knew the truth: that it was better to be pretty than ugly."

"Whatever our shapes and features, we were snares and enticements despite ourselves, we were the innocent and blameless causes that through our very nature could make men drunk with lust, so that they’d stagger and lurch and topple over the verge—The verge of what? we wondered."

"At least we can stop pretending that there is some solution at hand and instead join hands with millions of well-intentioned people across the world—elected officials and bureaucrats, teachers and NGO workers, academics and entrepreneurs—in the quest for the many ideas, big and small, that will eventually take us to that world where no one has to live on 99 cents per day."

"We also have no lever guaranteed to eradicate poverty, but once we accept that, time is on our side. Poverty has been with us for many thousands of years; if we have to wait another fifty or hundred years for the end of poverty, so be it."

"We may not have much to say about macroeconomic policies or institutional reform, but don’t let the apparent modesty of the enterprise fool you: Small changes can have big effects."

"Armed with this patient understanding, we can identify the poverty traps where they really are and know which tools we need to give the poor to help them get out of them."

"if we accept the possibility of error and subject every idea, including the most apparently commonsensical ones, to rigorous empirical testing, then we will be able not only to construct a toolbox of effective policies but also to better understand why the poor live the way they do. "

"This book is, in a sense, just an invitation to look more closely. If we resist the kind of lazy, formulaic thinking that reduces every problem to the same set of general principles; if we listen to poor people themselves and force ourselves to understand the logic of their choices;"

"Most important, the role of expectations means that success often feeds on itself. When a situation starts to improve, the improvement itself affects beliefs and behavior. This is one more reason one should not necessarily be afraid of handing things out (including cash) when needed to get a virtuous cycle started."

"Changing expectations is not easy, but it is not impossible:"

"Finally, expectations about what people are able or unable to do all too often end up turning into self-fulfilling prophecies."

"The good news, if that is the right expression, is that it is possible to improve governance and policy without changing the existing social and political structures. There is tremendous scope for improvement even in “good” institutional environments, and some margin for action even in bad ones."

"The fad of the moment (be it dams, barefoot doctors, microcredit, or whatever) is turned into a policy without any attention to the reality within which it is supposed to function."

"But many of these failures have less to do with some grand conspiracy of the elites to maintain their hold on the economy and more to do with some avoidable flaw in the detailed design of policies, and the ubiquitous three Is: ignorance, ideology, and inertia."

"Fourth, poor countries are not doomed to failure because they are poor, or because they have had an unfortunate history. It is true that things often do not work in these countries:"

"But we also have to recognize that in some cases, the conditions for a market to emerge on its own are simply not there. In such cases, governments should step in to support the market to provide the necessary conditions, or failing that, consider providing the service themselves."

"In some cases, a technological or an institutional innovation may allow a market to develop where it was missing."

"Third, there are good reasons that some markets are missing for the poor, or that the poor face unfavorable prices in them. The poor get a negative interest rate from their savings accounts (if they are lucky enough to have an account) and pay exorbitant rates on their loans (if they can get one) because handling even a small quantity of money entails a fixed cost."

"This means that their lives could be significantly improved by making it as easy as possible to do the right thing—based on everything else we know—using the power of default options and small nudges:"

"For the poor, this is compounded by the fact that their lives are already much more demanding than ours: Many of them run small businesses in highly competitive industries; most of the rest work as casual laborers and need to constantly worry about where their next job will come from."

"These decisions are difficult for everyone because they require some thinking now or some other small cost today, and the benefits are usually reaped in the distant future. As such, procrastination very easily gets in the way."

"Second, the poor bear responsibility for too many aspects of their lives. The richer you are, the more the “right” decisions are made for you."

"It must say something that people don’t already know (general exhortations like “No sex before marriage” seem to be less effective); it must do so in an attractive and simple way (a film, a play, a TV show, a well-designed report card); and it must come from a credible source (interestingly, the press seems to be viewed as credible)."

"We saw many instances in which a simple piece of information makes a big difference. However, not every information campaign is effective. It seems that in order to work, an information campaign must have several features:"

"Even when they know that they don’t know, the resulting uncertainty can be damaging."

"When their firmly held beliefs turn out to be incorrect, they end up making the wrong decision, sometimes with drastic consequences"

"First, the poor often lack critical pieces of information and believe things that are not true."