Interview: Poor Economics for Kids by Esther Duflo and Cheyenne Olivier

In 2011, Nobel Prize-winning economists Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, who are married to each other, published Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty. Duflo has now made the work accessible to younger readers through the picture book Poor Economics for Kids, co-authored with the illustrator Cheyenne Olivier. Esther Duflo: I had always wanted to publish a children’s book. This was important because in Indian languages and French, we published each story as a separate book, but we didn’t want kids to have to buy the whole series to be able to follow them. EO: Many parents said they wouldn’t read Poor Economics because while it is for the lay reader, it still requires focus and perhaps some knowledge of economics.