Members in the Media
From: PBS

Poverty makes financial decisions harder. Behavioral economics can help

PBS:

Last month, behavioral economist Dan Ariely and his team at the Center for Advanced Hindsight opened up the Common Cents Lab. Its goal is twofold: to examine how those living in poverty misspend their money and to help the poor make better financial decisions.

Kristen Doerer: What’s new about this initiative?

Dan Ariely: The important new initiative is that we’re going to go into financial institutions for the poor — the Latino community banks, the self-help bank, the federal credit unions, all types of financial institutions that serve lower, middle-income Americans — and we’re going to try to figure out what we can do to help them out. So we will bring a behavioral economics, social science perspective and examine their procedures. For example, let’s see where people should be taking cheaper loans, but don’t; where people should be borrowing less, but don’t; where people should put a little bit of money to the side, but don’t.

Read the whole story: PBS

More of our Members in the Media >


APS regularly opens certain online articles for discussion on our website. Effective February 2021, you must be a logged-in APS member to post comments. By posting a comment, you agree to our Community Guidelines and the display of your profile information, including your name and affiliation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations present in article comments are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of APS or the article’s author. For more information, please see our Community Guidelines.

Please login with your APS account to comment.