Abhijit Banerjee – Bringing the Poor to the Center of Development

In October 2019, Abhijit Banerjee won the Nobel Prize for Economics. This was in conjunction with his wife and fellow researcher, Esther Duflo, and fellow economist Michael Kremer. 

Banerjee was born in 1961 in Kolkata, India, and studied at Presidency College, where fellow Nobel Laureate Dr. Amartya Sen also cut his teeth. In 1983 he completed his Master’s degree in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, before moving to the US. Banerjee completed his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1988, teaching there and at Princeton. He then moved to MIT, where he is presently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics. 

What Banerjee (along with Duflo and Kremer) is known most for within academic circles, is their pioneering work in Randomized Control Testing (RCTs) that works to scientifically evaluate poverty reduction programs and has a participatory approach to poverty reduction; putting the poor at the center of the research.

What Banerjee advocates for is not a singular solution to poverty which is globally implemented, but a contextualized approach, where poverty is studied in every community, and programs used to mitigate poverty are tailored to those socioeconomic conditions. This is strongly linked to the approach used by the founder of Microfinance, Muhammad Yunus, which states that the poor are skilled and resourceful in their own way, they just need an enabling environment to bring themselves, their families, and their communities out of poverty. Banerjee chronicled this in his 2011 book ‘’Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty’.

Banerjee’s interest in poverty and its many incarnations was built through his childhood in Kolkata. From a young age, he was exposed to poverty through slum housing very close to his family home. When he interacted with these people, however, he found them to be talented, resourceful, and full of potential. ‘This urge to reduce the poor to a set of clichés has been with us for as long as there has been poverty. The poor appear, in social theory, as much as in literature, by turns lazy or enterprising, noble or thievish, angry or passive, helpless or self-sufficient’ Banerjee and Duflo wrote in ‘Poor Economics’.

His move to US academic institutions was motivated by his hope that his research would one day shape policy for the global poor. This is based on his belief that those in cultures where poverty is rife, must be represented by those who understand them.

Banerjee’s TCK story is one where he has picked up a potent social issue from his home culture and helped solved that on a global scale, through his academic aspirations in a new home culture that funds and promotes such research. It’s a powerful combination that has helped change the world. 

How has your TCK background helped you better understand a key social issue?

Learn more:

A student of Banerjee’s explains the role he has played in shaping his academic trajectory. 

Banerjee’s method of RCTs is detailed here.

The life story of Abhijit Banerjee.