Interview Prof. Lichand: The Poverty Trap

March 2018: An in­ter­view was con­duct­ed with Brazil­ian econ­o­mist Prof. Guil­herme Lic­hand on the top­ic “Out of the Pover­ty Trap by Text Mes­sage”. Ac­cord­ing to him, “If we want to find ways out of pover­ty, we have to un­der­stand how it im­pacts our cog­ni­tive fac­ul­ties.”

Pover­ty re­duces peo­ple’s abil­i­ty to think and take ac­tion and hence, lead to wrong de­ci­sions. Due to these wrong de­ci­sions, peo­ple stay poor. Pro­fes­sor Lic­hand is test­ing the use of text mes­sages to im­prove fi­nan­cial de­ci­sions of poor peo­ple.