About this book:

*Theories of Want* provides a comprehensive thematic history of economic thought on poverty, tracing its evolution from classical political economy to contemporary behavioral and experimental models. The book begins by examining the foundational ideas of Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo, who grappled with the tensions between market efficiency, population dynamics, and the "iron law" of wages. It then contrasts these views with Karl Marx’s structural critique of exploitation and the Victorian era’s pragmatic shift toward institutional responses like workhouses and organized philanthropy. As the discipline modernized, marginalists introduced utility and efficiency as core benchmarks, while Keynesian macroeconomics reframed poverty as a consequence of aggregate demand failures and mass unemployment.

The narrative shifts into the mid-twentieth century and beyond, exploring how development economics identified poverty traps rooted in geography and institutions, and how human capital theory linked lifetime earnings to investments in education and health. The text critically analyzes the neoliberal era’s focus on incentives and market liberalization, the public choice school’s skepticism of bureaucratic state capacity, and the rise of the welfare state as an architecture for redistribution. It highlights Amartya Sen’s seminal "capability approach," which redefined poverty not merely as low income, but as a deprivation of the substantive freedoms required to lead a flourishing life. This philosophical turn is complemented by feminist and household economics, which opened the "black box" of the family to reveal how internal power dynamics and unpaid care work shape individual well-being.

In its final sections, the book addresses the contemporary "credibility revolution," characterized by the widespread use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to identify what works at a micro-level. It investigates the psychological dimensions of poverty through behavioral economics, showing how the "bandwidth tax" of scarcity impairs decision-making. The text also navigates modern challenges such as informality, urban migration, and climate-related shocks, advocating for adaptive social protection and innovative financial tools like parametric insurance. Ultimately, the book serves as a diagnostic toolkit, urging policymakers to move beyond single-theory solutions and instead adopt a pluralistic approach that matches specific theoretical frameworks to the empirical realities and political constraints of the problem at hand.

What You'll Find Inside:

• Traces the evolution of economic thought on poverty from Adam Smith's classical framework to contemporary behavioral economics
• Examines different approaches to measuring poverty (absolute, relative, multidimensional) and their implications for policy design
• Compares major theoretical frameworks (Keynesian, Marxist, institutional, etc.) for explaining poverty's persistence and proposing remedies
• Provides a diagnostic toolkit for matching poverty problems to appropriate theories, evidence, and feasible policy solutions
• Emphasizes context-sensitive framework selection for effective poverty analysis and policy implementation

Who's It For:

This book is designed for advanced students in economics, public policy, or development studies, as well as practicing policymakers and development practitioners who need a comparative understanding of poverty theories to select appropriate analytical tools and design effective, context-sensitive anti-poverty policies.