Duncan Green looks at whether the poor should be the judge of their own lives. Well, should anyone be the judge of their own life? A long and winded philosophical question.
But Caroline Harper, of ODI, took issue with the book’s almost exclusive reliance on the testimony of poor people. Researchers asked people how they had got out of poverty and not surprisingly 75% or so said they did so thanks to their own initiative. The book pretty much takes that on trust and concludes (caricaturing a bit) that helping budding entrepreneurs is the best way forward. But what if they had asked their neighbours about the reasons of success? Somehow I think they would have got different answers with more emphasis on luck, connections, cheating etc.
I would suggest that communities should be responsible for understanding each other’s lives. A common discussion around how each person emerged from poverty would help paint a clearer picture and reveal the many underlying tensions.