PoP Briefing Notes

This Briefing Note offers insight into the prices paid by the poor households in order to avail the financial intermediations, and the reason behind their financial decisions. The findings in this Brief Note are based on the set of financial diaries developed in India, Bangladesh and South Africa from 1999-2005.

The Portfolios of the Poor financial diaries in Bangladesh span 1999-2005. As well as giving a unique insight into the challenges faced by poor households, they show how the households interact with the uniquely saturated and rapidly growing microfinance industry in the country.

Portfolios of the Poor offers new thinking about how the world’s poorest communities manage their financial lives. To uncover these intimate details, researchers designed a study in which they interviewed poor households twice a month over the course of a year, and recorded the details of how they lived their financial lives.

This Briefing Note highlights the extra-ordinary phenomenon of “borrowing while savings” described in the book – Portfolios of the Poor: How the world’s poor live on $2 a day. It also describes factors like simultaneous borrowing and saving and provided evidence for an explanation rooted in the difficulty of rebuilding savings.