47
" The poor seem to be trapped by the same kinds of problems that afflict the rest of us—lack of information, weak beliefs, and procrastination among them. It is true that we who are not poor are somewhat better educated and informed, but the difference is small because, in the end, we actually know very little, and almost surely less than we imagine. Our real advantage comes from the many things that we take as given. We live in houses where clean water gets piped in—we do not need to remember to add Chlorin to the water supply every morning. The sewage goes away on its own—we do not actually know how. We can (mostly) trust our doctors to do the best they can and can trust the public health system to figure out what we should and should not do. We have no choice but to get our children immunized—public schools will not take them if they aren’t—and even if we somehow manage to fail to do it, our children will probably be safe because everyone else is immunized. Our health insurers reward us for joining the gym, because they are concerned that we will not do it otherwise. And perhaps most important, most of us do not have to worry where our next meal will come from. In other words, we rarely need to draw upon our limited endowment of self-control and decisiveness, while the poor are constantly being required to do so. "
― Abhijit V. Banerjee , Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty
48
" Do we know of effective ways to help the poor?” Implicit in Singer’s argument for helping others is the idea that you know how to do it: The moral imperative to ruin your suit is much less compelling if you do not know how to swim. This is why, in The Life You Can Save, Singer takes the trouble to offer his readers a list of concrete examples of things that they should support, regularly updated on his Web site.12 Kristof and WuDunn do the same. The point is simple: Talking about the problems of the world without talking about some accessible solutions is the way to paralysis rather than progress. This is why it is really helpful to think in terms of concrete problems which can have specific answers, rather than foreign assistance in general: “aid” rather than “Aid.” To take an example, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), malaria caused almost 1 million deaths in 2008, mostly among African children.13 One thing we know is that sleeping under insecticide-treated bed nets can help save many of these lives. Studies have shown that in areas where malaria infection is common, sleeping under an insecticide-treated bed net reduces the incidence of malaria by half.14 What, then, is the best way to make sure that children sleep under bed nets? For approximately $10, you can deliver an insecticide-treated net to a family and teach the household how to use it. Should the government or an NGO give parents free bed nets, or ask them to buy their own, perhaps at a subsidized price? Or should we let them buy it in the market at full price? These questions can be answered, but the answers are by no means obvious. Yet many “experts” take strong positions on them that have little to do with evidence. Because malaria is contagious, if Mary sleeps under a bed net, John is less likely to get malaria—if at least half the population sleeps under a net, then even those who do not have much less risk of getting infected.15 The problem is that fewer than one-fourth of kids at risk sleep under a net:16 It looks like the $10 cost is too much for many families in Mali or Kenya. Given the benefits both to the user and others in the neighborhood, selling the nets at a discount or even giving them away would seem to be a good idea. Indeed, free bed-net distribution is one thing that Jeffrey Sachs advocates. "
― Abhijit V. Banerjee , Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty
53
" In 2002–2003, the World Bank conducted a World Absenteeism Survey in Bangladesh, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Peru, and Uganda and found that the average absentee rate of health workers (doctors and nurses) was 35 percent (it was 43 percent in India).28 In Udaipur, we found that these absences are also unpredictable, which makes it even harder for the poor to rely on these facilities. Private facilities offer the assurance that the doctor will be there. If he isn’t, he won’t get paid, whereas the absent government employee on a salary will. "
― Abhijit V. Banerjee , Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty
58
" This creates a huge waste of talent. Among all those people who drop out somewhere between primary school and college and those who never start school, many, perhaps most, are the victims of some misjudgment somewhere: Parents who give up too soon, teachers who never tried to teach them, the students’ own diffidence. Some of these people almost surely had the potential to be professors of economics or captains of industry. Instead they became daily laborers or shopkeepers, or if they were lucky, they made it to some minor clerical position. The slots that they left vacant were grabbed, in all likelihood, by mediocre children of parents who could afford to offer their children every possible opportunity to make good. "
― Abhijit V. Banerjee , Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty
