Esther Duflo on Poverty: It's Not Just the Lack of Money
IMF Blog, November 18, 2016
Source details
- Canonical URL
- Esther Duflo on Poverty: It's Not Just the Lack of Money
Other formats
Bibliographic details
- Authors: iMFdirect
- Published: November 18, 2016
Overview
- Publication: iMFdirect
- Date: November 18, 2016
- Author/Subject: Esther Duflo, Professor of Development Economics at MIT and co-founder of The Poverty Lab.
- Format: Web landing page featuring a podcast and summary remarks.
Key perspectives on poverty
- "I came to economics once I realized it was a powerful way to make a difference in the life of poor people."
- "Poverty is made of multiple angles. It's not just lack of money but it's also lack of education, lack of health, lack of information, lack of political inclusion and awareness, et cetera..."
- Emphasis: All economic and social dimensions of poverty must be considered in order to effectively address the problem.
Research and public engagement
- Duflo delivered the IMF's 2016 Richard Goode lecture earlier this month, where she presented some research on the loss of government revenues from corruption.
- On corruption and reform: importance of improving "customer service" when addressing corruption issues — "If you just fix the infrastructure and nothing touches the customer, then the changes will be much less likely to stick because there's not going to be a constituency of people who're going to support you."
Policy implications and recommendations (implicit in remarks)
- Address poverty through multifaceted interventions that target:
- Lack of money
- Lack of education
- Lack of health
- Lack of information
- Lack of political inclusion and awareness
- When combating corruption, pair infrastructure fixes with measures that affect the "customer" (citizens/users) to build constituency support and ensure lasting change.
Media
- The page features a podcast with Esther Duflo (embedded SoundCloud track).
Source: iMFdirect, November 18, 2016.