Poor Economics Resume Chapter 2

Today I start to read Poor Economics books written by Banerjee and Duflo. It is a worldwide selling book since It won 2011 Goldman Sachs Book Prize. It simply try to elaborate the life of poor people by extracting it trough lot of data, and careful observation. I found this book put much emphasize on practical examples, rather than mere theory, make it easier for reader to understand. It even included a story from Indonesian former peasant which now unemployed, and struggled for feed his family.

Along with this post, I will just resume Chapter 2 (which I had just finished). In this chapter, it explain about Food and Poverty. Access to adequate food had been a problem for vast majority of world population today. WB estimates that around 1/4 of world population earn less than $2/day. Given such a low income, they probably do not have enough money to buy adequate food for life. They simply purchase low-nutrient food. What happened is obvious, they suffer for malnutrition, they grew up in a small body, children has low IQ, and etc. Research had shown that nutrients are important for human growth. 

Another case would be about poor, and its consumption to food. We may think, that food is an important stuffs for poor people to be fulfilled. But thats not always the case. It might true, for a very poor, but not with poor who lived just below poverty line. As income rises, they are not buy more nutrients, but more expensive nutrients. As income grow a bit higher, they seek for "pleasure stuffs", such as TV, DVD Player, and so on. For them, just eat enough is enough, there are lack needs of consume more nutrients. It is proved based on data set on 18 countries, that shown rural people tend to spend less percentage on food consumption rather than urban people.

Whereas, research shown that an increase of nutrients in human body can increase their productivity, and result on higher income. It is proved based on research in African, when a farmer is given an iron pill for endure his stamina, his productivity rises, and his income rise by 40% as well. Same applied with children. Children who obtain sufficient nutrients will have a better IQ, and perform better in classroom.

So that's is my resume for chapter 2. We always think that poor people does not have adequate access to good food, but it might not be a big problems for them. They, after all, is an ordinary human, which had balance between spending on food, and luxury goods. So then, rather than talking on increasing spending for their foods, why don't we think about providing a more-nutrients-contained food with same level of price?

Unique things : In the book, they used to call Government Rice Subsidy as Rashkin, instead of Raskin. I probably should email them for acknowledgement. LOL