IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joepsy/v32y2011i2p284-293.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The psychology and behavioural economics of poverty

Author

Listed:
  • Anand, Paul
  • Lea, Stephen

Abstract

The paper provides an overview and assessment of an emerging literature on the psychology and behavioural economics of poverty. We particularly highlight poverty experiences, role of neighbourhoods, poverty dynamics and transmission, child poverty and disability and personal finance. In addition we consider psychology and policy responses by looking and autonomy and empowerment, and poverty reduction programs. Our central thesis is that the detailed knowledge of individual experiences, cognitions and social factors in psychology and related social science complements the traditional economic emphasis on structural factors and policy instruments in a way that is exemplified by emerging work in behavioural economics. We conclude it is increasingly recognised that poverty reduction policies which are informed by behavioural insights may, as a result, be more effective.

Suggested Citation

  • Anand, Paul & Lea, Stephen, 2011. "The psychology and behavioural economics of poverty," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 284-293, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:32:y:2011:i:2:p:284-293
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167-4870(10)00130-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary S. Becker, 2007. "Health as human capital: synthesis and extensions -super-1," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 59(3), pages 379-410, July.
    2. Solava Ibrahim & Sabina Alkire, 2007. "Agency and Empowerment: A Proposal for Internationally Comparable Indicators," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(4), pages 379-403.
    3. Korenman, Sanders & Miller, Jane E. & Sjaastad, John E., 1995. "Long-term poverty and child development in the United States: Results from the NLSY," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 17(1-2), pages 127-155.
    4. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan & Eldar Shafir, 2004. "A Behavioral-Economics View of Poverty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 419-423, May.
    5. Paul Anand & Graham Hunter & Ian Carter & Keith Dowding & Francesco Guala & Martin Van Hees, 2009. "The Development of Capability Indicators," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(1), pages 125-152.
    6. Paul Anand & Cristina Santos & Ron Smith, 2007. "The measurement of capabilities," Open Discussion Papers in Economics 67, The Open University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Economics.
    7. Aldi Hagenaars & Klaas de Vos, 1988. "The Definition and Measurement of Poverty," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 23(2), pages 211-221.
    8. P. Jenkins, Stephen & Schluter, Christian, 2001. "Why are child poverty rates higher in Britain than in Germany? a longitudinal perspective -working paper-," ISER Working Paper Series 2001-16, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    9. Livingstone, Sonia M. & Lunt, Peter K., 1992. "Predicting personal debt and debt repayment: Psychological, social and economic determinants," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 111-134, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Asadullah, Mohammad Niaz & Chaudhury, Nazmul, 2012. "Subjective well-being and relative poverty in rural Bangladesh," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 940-950.
    2. Ayllón, Sara & Fusco, Alessio, 2017. "Are income poverty and perceptions of financial difficulties dynamically interrelated?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 103-114.
    3. Carmen H Logie & Jesse I R Jenkinson & Valerie Earnshaw & Wangari Tharao & Mona R Loutfy, 2016. "A Structural Equation Model of HIV-Related Stigma, Racial Discrimination, Housing Insecurity and Wellbeing among African and Caribbean Black Women Living with HIV in Ontario, Canada," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(9), pages 1-20, September.
    4. Spears Dean, 2011. "Economic Decision-Making in Poverty Depletes Behavioral Control," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-44, December.
    5. Lim, Sung Soo & Bone, Matthew, 2022. "Optimism, debt accumulation, and business growth," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    6. Elijah Macharia Ndung’u (PhD), 2021. "Trauma of Poverty and its Psychological Impact: A Case of Kenya," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 5(09), pages 906-915, September.
    7. Tomasz Potocki, 2022. "Locating Financial Capability Within Capability Approach – Theoretical Survey," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 1, pages 96-106.
    8. Alex Lord & Philip O’Brien, 2017. "What price planning? Reimagining planning as “market maker”," Planning Theory & Practice, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(2), pages 217-232, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Leßmann, Ortrud, 2011. "Empirische Studien zum Capability Ansatz auf der Grundlage von Befragungen: Ein Überblick," UFZ Discussion Papers 4/2011, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Division of Social Sciences (ÖKUS).
    2. Lessmann, Ortrud, 2012. "Applying the Capability Approach Empirically: An Overview with Special Attention to Labor," management revue. Socio-economic Studies, Rainer Hampp Verlag, vol. 23(2), pages 98-118.
    3. Jürgen Volkert & Friedrich Schneider, 2011. "The Application of the Capability Approach to High-Income OECD Countries: A Preliminary Survey," CESifo Working Paper Series 3364, CESifo.
    4. Philippe Tessier & Josselin Thuilliez, 2018. "Does freedom make a difference?," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 19(8), pages 1189-1205, November.
    5. Karen Hofmann & Dominik Schori & Thomas Abel, 2013. "Self-Reported Capabilities Among Young Male Adults in Switzerland: Translation and Psychometric Evaluation of a German, French and Italian Version of a Closed Survey Instrument," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 114(2), pages 723-738, November.
    6. Nicolai Suppa, 2012. "Does Capability Deprivation Hurt? – Evidence from German Panel Data," Ruhr Economic Papers 0359, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen.
    7. Annie Austin, 2016. "On Well-Being and Public Policy: Are We Capable of Questioning the Hegemony of Happiness?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 127(1), pages 123-138, May.
    8. Kwaramba, Hazel M. & Lovett, Jon C. & Louw, Lynette & Chipumuro, Juliet, 2012. "Emotional confidence levels and success of tourism development for poverty reduction: The South African Kwam eMakana home-stay project," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 885-894.
    9. Martin Binder, 2014. "Subjective Well-Being Capabilities: Bridging the Gap Between the Capability Approach and Subjective Well-Being Research," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 15(5), pages 1197-1217, October.
    10. Robert A. Cummins & Kenneth C. Land, 2018. "Capabilities, Subjective Wellbeing and Public Policy: A Response to Austin (2016)," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 140(1), pages 157-173, November.
    11. Hojman, Daniel A. & Miranda, Álvaro, 2018. "Agency, Human Dignity, and Subjective Well-being," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 1-15.
    12. Leßmann, Ortrud, 2012. "Indikatoren im Capability-Ansatz und der Bezug zur Nachhaltigkeit: Welchen Beitrag kann der CA leisten?," UFZ Discussion Papers 16/2012, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Division of Social Sciences (ÖKUS).
    13. Suppa, Nicolai, 2012. "Does Capability Deprivation Hurt? – Evidence from German Panel Data," Ruhr Economic Papers 359, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    14. Habibi, Samira & Hajimoladarvish, Narges & Raghfar, Hossein, 2021. "The effect of mental poverty on labor performance," Quarterly Journal of Applied Theories of Economics, Faculty of Economics, Management and Business, University of Tabriz, vol. 8(1), pages 165-184, June.
    15. repec:zbw:rwirep:0359 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Vizard, Polly, 2010. "Developing and agreeing a capability list in the British context: what can be learnt from social survey data on ‘rights’?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 43866, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Martin Binder & Alex Coad, 2011. "Disentangling the Circularity in Sen’s Capability Approach: An Analysis of the Co-Evolution of Functioning Achievement and Resources," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 103(3), pages 327-355, September.
    18. Theo Dijkstra, 2014. "Ridge regression and its degrees of freedom," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(6), pages 3185-3193, November.
    19. Tomáš Želinský & Martina Mysíková & Thesia I. Garner, 2022. "Trends in Subjective Income Poverty Rates in the European Union," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 34(5), pages 2493-2516, October.
    20. Jeni Klugman & Francisco Rodríguez & Hyung-Jin Choi, 2011. "The HDI 2010: new controversies, old critiques," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(2), pages 249-288, June.
    21. Ilaria Schnyder von Wartensee & Elizabeth Hlabse & Gabriella Berloffa & Giuseppe Folloni, 2019. "The Role of Personal Identity in Human Development," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 31(3), pages 461-479, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:32:y:2011:i:2:p:284-293. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.