A little light reading – 40 pages of details on how they spend their money, and how they get by.

the economic lives of the very poor.pdf.zip

The propensity to own a radio or a television, a widespread form of entertainment for American households varies considerably across countries. For example, among rural households living under $1 per day, ownership of a radio is 11 percent in the Udaipur survey, almost 60 percent in Nicaragua and Guatemala, and above 70 percent in South Africa and Peru. Similarly, no one owns a television in Udaipur, but in Guatemala nearly a quarter of households do, and in Nicaragua, the percentage is closer to a half.

Only 4 percent of those living under $1 a day own land in Mexico, 1.4 percent in South Africa; 30 percent in Pakistan, 37 percent in Guatemala, 50 percent in Nicaragua and Indonesia, 63 percent in Cote d’Ivoire; 65 percent in Peru; and 85 percent in Panama. In the Udaipur sample, 99 percent of the households below $1 a day own some land in addition to the land on which their house is built, although much of it is dry scrubland that cannot be cultivated for most of the year

I can see this is going to keep me busy for a while.