Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo
Instead of assuming the poor are irrational or lazy, we must understand the intense cognitive and structural constraints that shape their daily financial and health decisions.
Poverty imposes extreme cognitive and emotional burdens, meaning the poor must exert immense willpower to achieve basic stability that wealthier people receive automatically from established institutions.
When their income slightly increases, the extremely poor prioritize tasty foods and temporary pleasures over pure nutritional value or long-term investments.
Poor populations consistently underinvest in cheap preventative healthcare like vaccines or bed nets, yet spend heavily on expensive, reactive private treatments when emergencies strike.