Esther Duflo: « la lutte contre la pauvreté a toujours été avec moi »

Professor Esther Duflo, co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and winner of the Nobel Prize in economics in 2019 discussed her series of children's books on poverty in an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP). She spoke of the impact of literature and particularly books on poverty in her own childhood. She recalled the slides and literature that her mother, a war-time pediatrician, would bring back from her travels and spoke of the sense of privilege it ingrained.

'I was always more or less vaguely in search of what would allow me to repay this cosmic debt,' shared Esther. 'The fight against poverty has always been with me,' she said.

The internationally renowned economist has now published a series of children's books on poverty. Five books are newly published following the initial five published last year. The book is illustrated by Cheyenne Olivier, a graduate of the Strasbourg School of Fine Arts and former au pair to Duflo's children.

The series is an adaptation of Esther's previous work, 'Rethinking Poverty' and is intended for children aged six and over. The stories are written to make the topics easy to understand and are accompanied by text for parents and teachers.

'Beyond each image, each text, there are volumes of research which justify everything that is said,' explained Duflo.