When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself

The first step in poverty alleviation, then, is to recognize that, due to the fall, our culture is likely to have a distorted story of change, which we may have unknowingly internalized.

As we shall see, the fact that our poverty alleviation efforts often do harm is because we have—unknowingly and unconsciously, yet deeply and destructively—absorbed misguided stories of change from our culture.

systems that should enable human beings to flourish often do the exact opposite.

First, you might be able to find ways to help materially poor people better navigate the existing systems.