Recommended ReadsApril 3rd, 2020
Poverty isn’t a lack of character. It’s a lack of cash.
The really important idea in this article is that bad decisions don’t cause poverty; poverty causes bad decisions – or more specifically, the cognitive overload caused by poverty. Poor people make bad decisions “not because they are stupid but because they’re living in a context in which anyone would make bad decisions.”
It’s possible to study this: Indian sugarcane farmers are poor for part of the year (before the harvest) and well off immediately after it. The exact same people perform very differently on cognition tests at different times of year.
People in poverty don’t need financial education, incentives, punishments and nudges – they just need money.
