Publications

January 2000
Article

Utility Functions for Wealth

By: David E. Bell and Peter C Fishburn

Keywords: Wealth

01 Oct 2021
News

HBS-Harvard Collaboration Fosters New Ventures

Thrive! helps communities of color Roughly 84 percent of children born into poverty will live in poverty for the rest of their lives. Thrive! is a software-as-a-service that helps local governments break the... View Details

2006
Book

A Corporate Solution to Global Poverty: How Multinationals Can Help the Poor and Invigorate Their Own Legitimacy

By: George C. Lodge and Craig Wilson

Keywords: Poverty; Multinational Firms and Management

Alumni Changing the World

Esther Hsu Wang

Esther Hsu Wang, MBA 2009, Founding Partner of IDinsight, is on a mission to change the way the world supports those in need. Based in Lusaka, Zambia and serving organizations across Africa and Asia, IDinsight uses data and measurement to help leaders in the... View Details

2020
Working Paper

Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Consumption: The Impact of Access and Value

By: Retsef Levi, Elisabeth Paulson and Georgia Perakis

The goal of this paper is to leverage household-level data to improve food-related policies aimed at increasing the consumption of fruits and vegetables (FVs) among low-income households. Currently, several interventions target areas where residents have limited... View Details

Keywords: Food Deserts; Food Access; Food Policy; Causal Inference; Food; Nutrition; Poverty; Government Administration

SSRN

15 May 2007
First Look

First Look: May 15, 2007

http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/07-078.pdf Cases & Course MaterialsAid, Debt Relief, and Trade: An Agenda for Fighting World Poverty (A) Harvard Business School Case 707-029 At the 2005 Group of Eight summit, world leaders agreed to... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

08 Jun 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Food Security and Human Mobility During the Covid-19 Lockdown

Keywords: by Prithwiraj Choudhury, Wesley W. Koo, Xina Li, Nishant Kishore, Satchit Balsari, and Tarun Khanna

November 2022
Article

The Sharp Spikes of Poverty: Financial Scarcity Is Related to Higher Levels of Distress Intensity in Daily Life

By: Jon M. Jachimowicz, Erin L. Frey, Sandra C. Matz, Bertus F. Jeronimus and Adam D. Galinsky

Although income is an important predictor of life satisfaction, the precise forces that drive this relationship remain unclear. We propose that financial resources afford individuals a path to reducing the distressing impact of everyday hassles, in turn increasing... View Details

Keywords: Distress; Affect; Control; Financial Scarcity; Life Satisfaction; Income; Poverty; Well-being

September 2024
Article

Investing in the Next Generation: The Long-Run Impacts of a Liquidity Shock

By: Patrick Agte, Arielle Bernhardt, Erica M. Field, Rohini Pande and Natalia Rigol

How do poor entrepreneurs trade off investments in business enterprises versus children's human capital, and how do these choices influence intergenerational socio-economic mobility? To examine this, we exploit experimental variation in household income resulting from... View Details

Keywords: Socio-economic Mobility; Entrepreneurship; Education; Income; Literacy; Poverty

Register to Read

January 2007 (Revised May 2009)
Case

Kibera and the Kenya Slum Upgrading Project (A)

By: Nicolas P. Retsinas, Arthur I Segel, Marc Diaz and John Dean Shepherd

Kenya's Minister of Housing faces tremendous pressures in dealing with the pervasive housing troubles in his country. Kibera is the largest slum in Africa and home to more than 800,000 residents, yet only measures two square kilometers, roughly half the size of... View Details

Keywords: Construction; Housing; Urban Development; Poverty; Kenya

Educators

2003
Other Unpublished Work

Initiative for a Competitive Milwaukee: A Call to Action

By: Michael E. Porter

The inner city of Milwaukee holds great promise, but is not advancing economically. The inner city has been hard hit by the loss of many of its largest employers as a result of relocation, acquisition and failure. According to the 2000 US Census data, thirty percent of... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Society; Poverty; Economy; Growth and Development; Wisconsin

2007
Working Paper

A Resource Belief-Curse: Oil and Individualism

By: Rafael Di Tella, Juan Dubra and Robert MacCulloch

We study the correlation between a belief concerning individualism and a measure of luck in the US during the period 1983-2004. The measure of beliefs is the answer to a question related to whether the poor should be helped by the government or if they should help... View Details

Keywords: Energy; Price; Policy; Government and Politics; Poverty; Welfare; Energy Industry; United States

Portrait Project

Nina Bilimoria

I hear an ambulance siren at 2 AM, and I think, "Someone's family is having a horrible day." I leave yet another lecture on poverty reduction, and I think, "There's so much on the world's to-do list for this short... View Details

October 1998
Case

"Pathways to Independence": Welfare-to-Work at Marriott International

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Ellen Pruyne

In 1991 Marriott International established a program called Pathways to Independence to recruit and train people from the welfare rolls. The program graduated over 1,000 people in eight years and retained about 20% more of its participants than regular hires. Now the... View Details

Keywords: Recruitment; Retention; Training; Expansion; Quality; Poverty; Programs

Educators

Article

From Blood Diamonds to Dirty Gold: How to Buy Gold Less Tainted by Mercury

By: Kristin Sippl

This is a quick and easy news article on the link between poverty, mercury pollution, and gold mining. It explains the problems in the jewelry industry as well as public and civil society attempts to address them. View Details

Keywords: Mining; Pollutants; Poverty; Social Issues

January 2009
Teaching Note

The Octopus and the Generals: The United Fruit Company in Guatemala (TN)

By: Geoffrey G. Jones and Marcelo Bucheli

Teaching Note for [805146]. View Details

Keywords: Policy; Vertical Integration; Economy; War; Poverty; Government and Politics; Food and Beverage Industry; Guatemala; North and Central America

December 20, 2007
Article

Profit And Poverty: Why It Matters

By: Michael Chu

Commentary on investing in microfinance View Details

Keywords: Microfinance; Profit; Poverty; Financial Services Industry

2007
Chapter

Fighting AIDS, Fighting Poverty: Customer Centric Marketing in the Generic Antiretroviral Business

By: Rohit Deshpandé and Zoe Chance

Keywords: Health Disorders; Poverty; Product Marketing; Customers; Pharmaceutical Industry; Biotechnology Industry

September 2022
Article

The Impact of Financial Assistance Programs on Health Care Utilization: Evidence from Kaiser Permanente

By: Alyce S. Adams, Raymond Kluender, Neale Mahoney, Jinglin Wang, Francis Wong and Wesley Yin

Most hospitals have financial assistance programs for low-income patients. We use administrative data from Kaiser Permanente to study the effects of financial assistance on health care utilization. Using a regression discontinuity design based on an income threshold... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Utilization; Financial Assistance; Health Care and Treatment; Social Issues; Poverty; Health Industry