Why would a man in Morocco who doesn't have enough to eat buy a television?
Why do the poorest people in the Indian state of Maharashtra spend 7 percent of their food budget on sugar?
Does having lots of children actually make you poorer?

In this book, Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo show why the poor, despite having the same desires and abilities as anyone else, end up with entirely different lives.

Poor Economics argues that so much of anti-poverty policy has failed over the years because of an inadequate understanding of poverty. Looking at some of the most surprising facets of poverty: why the poor need to borrow in order to save, why they miss out on free life-saving immunizations but pay for drugs that they do not need, and why they start many businesses but do not grow any of them, Banerjee and Duflo give us all a new understanding of the complex reality of living on very little and offer practical solutions for reducing poverty.