Katharine Vincent and Tracy Cull wrote a review of the book “Portfolios of the Poor: How the world’s poor live on $2 a day”, which has been published in the latest issue of the journal Progress in Development Studies (volume 11, number 2, April 2011).
“Portfolios of the Poor”, by D. Collins, J. Morduch, S. Rutherford and O. Ruthven (2009) is a unique attempt to examine balance sheets and money management strategies of poor households in Bangladesh, India, and South Africa, based on an innovative technique called “financial diaries”, in which households are interviewed twice monthly over a two year period. The results have important implications for development policy and microfinance.