"If you happen to be mostly depressed about the state of your life, I don’t know whether you feel like doing impulse control. If you are like me and you see that you have a bunch of ambitions that you actually think you have a reasonable chance of realising in life, you may be very different in terms of your willingness to give up the almond croissant. But if I feel that everything I’ve hoped for never worked, then what am I restraining myself for? That’s a completely legitimate way to think. And I think that it may well be that a substantial part of the reason why the poor look as if they’re taking worse decisions is because they don’t care enough, and they don’t care enough because they really, probably rightly, see that their chances of getting somewhere very different are minimal. If you’re never going to climb up that hill towards attainment, then you might as well not try. There’s no point pushing the rock up the hill and having it roll down on you."
—
Abhijit Banerjee quoted in an article by Decca Aitkenhead in The Guardian.
Abhijit Banerjee: ‘The poor, probably rightly, see that their chances of getting somewhere different are minimal’
The author of Poor Economics on why aid that assumes the poor will do the right thing is misguided – and why political corruption does not necessarily mean economic stagnation
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