Why Do People Stay Poor?. Issue 2 (7th December 2021)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- Why Do People Stay Poor?. Issue 2 (7th December 2021)
- Main Title:
- Why Do People Stay Poor?
- Authors:
- Balboni, Clare
Bandiera, Oriana
Burgess, Robin
Ghatak, Maitreesh
Heil, Anton - Abstract:
- Abstract: There are two broad views as to why people stay poor. One emphasizes differences in fundamentals, such as ability, talent, or motivation. The poverty traps view emphasizes differences in opportunities that stem from access to wealth. To test these views, we exploit a large-scale, randomized asset transfer and an 11-year panel of 6, 000 households who begin in extreme poverty. The setting is rural Bangladesh, and the assets are cows. The data support the poverty traps view—we identify a threshold level of initial assets above which households accumulate assets, take on better occupations (from casual labor in agriculture or domestic services to running small livestock businesses), and grow out of poverty. The reverse happens for those below the threshold. Structural estimation of an occupational choice model reveals that almost all beneficiaries are misallocated in the work they do at baseline and that the gains arising from eliminating misallocation would far exceed the program costs. Our findings imply that large transfers, which create better jobs for the poor, are an effective means of getting people out of poverty traps and reducing global poverty.
- Is Part Of:
- Quarterly journal of economics. Volume 137:Issue 2(2022)
- Journal:
- Quarterly journal of economics
- Issue:
- Volume 137:Issue 2(2022)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 137, Issue 2 (2022)
- Year:
- 2022
- Volume:
- 137
- Issue:
- 2
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2022-0137-0002-0000
- Page Start:
- 785
- Page End:
- 844
- Publication Date:
- 2021-12-07
- Subjects:
- Economics -- Periodicals
330.05 - Journal URLs:
- http://qje.oxfordjournals.org ↗
http://www.jstor.org/journals/00335533.html ↗
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/ ↗
http://www.catchword.com/rpsv/cw/mitpress/00335533/contp1.htm ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1093/qje/qjab045 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 0033-5533
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - 7188.400000
British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 21266.xml