Understanding Poverty
Banerjee, Abhijit Vinayak Professor of Economics, MIT
Mookherjee, Dilip Professor of Economics, Boston University
Bénabou, Roland Professor of Economics, Princeton University
Print publication date: 2006 (this edition)
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2006
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-530519-7




28 Aspirations, Poverty, and Economic Change
doi:10.1093/0195305191.003.0028

Debraj Ray
Abstract: This essay discusses a particular aspect of poverty: its close and brutal association with a failure of aspirations. This is not an assertion about individuals who are poor; it is a statement about the condition of poverty itself. Poverty stifles dreams, or at least the process of attaining dreams. Thus, poverty and the failure of aspirations may be reciprocally linked in a self-sustaining trap. This essay seeks to draw out various aspects of this theme and, in the process, to introduce and discuss an aspirations-based view of individual behavior.

Keywords: aspirations window, poor, individual behavior, social polarization, aspirations failure, collective action,

You have access to the abstract for this item.     You have access to the full text for this item.


 
Privacy Policy and Legal Notice © Oxford University Press, . All rights reserved.
Quick Search Form

Contents
 
scroll up fast
scroll up
 
scroll down
scroll down fast
Full Book Contents
Introduction
1 Measuring Poverty
PART I THE CAUSES OF POVERTY
2 Understanding Prosperity and Poverty: Geography, Institutions, and the Reversal of Fortune
3 Colonialism, Inequality, and Long-Run Paths of Development
4 The Kuznets Curve: Yesterday and Tomorrow
5 New Growth Approach to Poverty Alleviation
6 Globalization and All That
7 The Global Economy and the Poor
8 The Role of Agriculture in Development
9 Fertility and Income
10 Fertility in Developing Countries
11 Corruption and Development
12 Ethnic Diversity and Poverty Reduction
PART II HOW SHOULD WE GO ABOUT FIGHTING POVERTY?
13 Redistribution toward Low Incomes in Richer Countries
14 Transfers and Safety Nets in Poor Countries: Revisiting the Trade-Offs and Policy Options
15 Poverty Persistence and Design of Antipoverty Policies
16 Child Labor
17 Policy Dilemmas for Controlling Child Labor
18 The Primacy of Education
19 Public Goods and Economic Development
20 Intellectual Property and Health in Developing Countries
21 Public Policies to Stimulate Development of Vaccines for Neglected Diseases
22 Microinsurance: The Next Revolution?
23 Credit, Intermediation, and Poverty Reduction
PART III NEW WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT POVERTY
24 Poor but Rational?
25 Better Choices to Reduce Poverty
26 Nonmarket Institutions
27 Racial Stigma: Toward a New Paradigm for Discrimination Theory
28 Aspirations, Poverty, and Economic Change
Index
 
Return to top of list
SUBSCRIBER