Full name: Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail

Author: Paul Polak Year: 2008 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Non Fiction, Economics Culture: Africa Purchase/reserch links: Goodreads Amazon LibraryThing ISBNs: 9781576754498 9781605092768 1576754499 1605092762

Based on his 25 years of experience, Polak explodes what he calls the "Three Great Poverty Eradication Myths": that we can donate people out of poverty, that national economic growth will end poverty, and that Big Business, operating as it does now, will end poverty. Polak shows that programs based on these ideas have utterly failed--in fact, in sub-Saharan Africa poverty rates have actually gone up.These failed top-down efforts contrast sharply with the grassroots approach Polak and IDE have championed: helping the dollar-a-day poor earn more money through their own efforts. Amazingly enough, unexploited market opportunities do exist for the desperately poor. Polak describes how he and others have identified these opportunities and have developed innovative, low-cost tools that have helped in lifting 17 million people out of poverty. Similar books: Disposable People by Kevin Bales Soccernomics by Simon Kuper Secrecy World by Jake Bernstein Man vs. Markets by Paddy Hirsch Saving the Sun by Gillian Tett The Dollar Meltdown by Charles Goyette Economics for the Rest of Us by Moshe Adler The Outsourced Self by Arlie Russell Hochschild Lost Decades by Menzie Chinn Falling Behind by Robert Frank More Sex Is Safer Sex by Steven E. Landsburg The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz The Jobless Future by Stanley Aronowitz The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford The Locust Effect by Gary A. Haugen Tightrope by Nicholas D. Kristof No, They Can't by John Stossel Factory Girls by Leslie T. Chang Born on Third Base by Chuck Collins Beyond Outrage by Robert B. Reich