The best books on the economy as if people mattered

Drawing on her first-hand experience of living in a shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Perlman powerfully upends many existing myths about the urban poor as marginal in this classic work.

This book, which inspired me to look beyond the economic models at how people actually live, shows how shantytown dwellers are integrated into society, but in a way that exploits and oppresses them economically and politically.

They are not socially and culturally marginal, but rather they are stigmatized and excluded from a closed social system that is radically unequal.

They are socially well-organized and cohesive; they aspire to educate their children and improve the quality of their homes; they work hard and take pride in a job well done. They are aware of and involved in those aspects of politics that affect their lives. 

In this riveting account, Agbiboa dispels the myth that corruption is a culturally accepted norm in Nigeria.

He spent months behind the wheel as a minibus conductor in the informal settlements of Lagos, Nigeria, and experienced first-hand the stark realities of the corrupt interactions between drivers, police, and members of the transport workers union.

Nigerians reject, and simultaneously have little choice, but to participate in the petty corruption that arises from the systematic, violent, and exploitative relationship between the state and union on the one hand, and transport operators and passengers on the other.

Agbiboa shows that binary understandings of formality/informality, public/private, and legal/illegal derived from Western thought do not adequately capture the way that petty corruption is embedded in the state and is driven by elite corruption.

This resonated strongly with my research on the informal economy in Tanzania.

In researching his book, Matthew Desmond lived in several homes of the urban poor in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, both white and African-American.

He graphically depicts how eight low-income families managed the everyday problems of feeding their children, paying the rent, eviction, and violence perpetrated by gangs and criminals.

In this unvarnished account of the lives of poor urban dwellers, Desmond shows how one eviction can create a cascade of problems, making it difficult to rent another apartment and how it contributes to unemployment, school absence, health, undernourishment, depression, and even suicide.

Access to housing is a key factor trapping people in poverty in the United States, especially when the overwhelming majority of one’s income goes toward rent. 

Ela Bhatt, a former Member of the Indian parliament, chronicles the astonishing rise of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) ,which she helped form in 1972.

The overwhelming majority of the labor force in India is self-employed and the majority of the self-employed are women. Today SEWA works in 18 Indian states and is made up of 2.1 million informal women workers — the single largest union of informal sector workers in the world.

In this first-hand account, Bhatt shows how the organization struggled against cultural norms, the state, and formal unions, and challenged the rise of Hindu nationalism as it mobilized women across religious lines and caste in the state of Gujarat, which has experienced decades of Hindu-Muslim violence.

Veteran journalist Neuwirth challenges conventional economic thinking when he explores the global dimensions of the informal economy, worth trillions, that operates all around us yet is hidden from view.

His eye-opening depictions from Brazil to Nigeria and China ring true to anyone familiar with this economy that has its own unwritten rules, provides economic opportunities to half the world’s population, offers consumers with affordable products, and recycles waste.

He takes seriously the aspirations of the participants in this economy who interface with the formal economy, yet do not necessarily aspire to work in it.