THE EVERDAY OBSERVATION

A couple of months ago I visited my boyfriend in Washington D.C. Thanks to lunch visits at his office at the World Bank, I was persuaded to take a look inside the Bank’s library and purchase the South Asian department’s latest study entitled, Moving out of Poverty. I recently began to read the book and have since completed reading an outline of the results and a summary of interpretations of these findings.

One point made by the authors stands out to me. This is the separation of mechanisms guiding the movement into and out of poverty. Although made prominent by the authors as an important point, it is a seemingly subtle process detail. The analyzing of these mechanisms separately is a very exciting approach as they differ quite dramatically.

People often say that scholars write the same things over and over with slight adjustments or additions. I often joke that a catchy phrase will prove to make a seemingly new study catch on. The slight adjustment in analysis considered by the researchers of Moving out of Poverty, have regained my faith in scholarly work in that sometimes the nuances of an everyday observation can be overlooked.