[]
Poor Economics
  • Published: 24 February 2026
  • ISBN: 9781837312405
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $30.00
Categories:

Poor Economics

The Surprising Truth about Life on Less Than $1 a Day

Buy from…
Book Hero BookHub Mighty Ape Paper Plus The Nile The Warehouse Whitcoulls Unity Books Find Local Retailers

A fully updated edition of the seminal work in which the Nobel Prize-winning economists upend assumptions by revealing the unexpected choices that the poorest people make

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

This eye-opening book overturns the myths about what it is like to live on very little, revealing the unexpected decisions that millions of people make every day. Looking at some of the most paradoxical aspects of life below the poverty line - why the poor need to borrow in order to save, why incentives that seem effective to us may not be for them, and why, despite being more risk-taking than high financiers, they start businesses but rarely grow them - Banerjee and Duflo offer a new understanding of the surprising way the world really works.

This fully revised edition is updated with two new chapters that bring further insights from the last decade of research.
  • Published: 24 February 2026
  • ISBN: 9781837312405
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $30.00
Categories:

About the authors

Abhijit V. Banerjee

Abhijit V. Banerjee is Lemann Foundation Professor in Economics at the University of Zurich and Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at MIT.
AV.

Praise for Poor Economics

Poor Economics is making waves . . . refreshingly original, wonderfully insightful . . . an entirely new perspective

Guardian

A marvellously insightful book by two outstanding researchers on the real nature of poverty

Amartya Sen

It has been years since I read a book that taught me so much

Steven D. Levitt

A page-turner about the micro-economics of aid policy might not sound too probable, but that's what [Banerjee and Duflo] have written, and it is a truly remarkable book . . . unmistakably contemporary, written beautifully

Guardian

A compelling and important read

Forbes

An engrossing new book

Economist

Marvellous . . . they deserve to be congratulated, and to be read

Wall Street Journal