He is co-author with Rachel Schneider of The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty.
Rachel Schneider is Senior Vice President at the Center for Financial Services Innovation and co-author of The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty.
In The Financial Diaries, Jonathan Morduch and Rachel Schneider draw on the groundbreaking U.S. Financial Diaries, which follow the lives of 235 low- and middle-income families as they navigate through a year.
Ten years ago, the authors of this unusual study began collecting detailed yearlong "financial diaries" from households in Bangladesh, India, and South Africa, with a focus on those living on less than two dollars a day per person.
"When your income is spiking and expenditures are spiking, it's very hard to put away a regular amount each month," says Jonathan Morduch, economics professor at NYU's Wagner School and a lead researcher for the financial diaries project.
The authors spent several years collecting and studying "financial diaries" from more than 250 households in Bangladesh, India and South Africa -- detailed accounts of how poor families earned, spent, borrowed, saved and invested.
According to the U.S. Financial Diaries just 7% of households are able to meet their emergency savings goals.
Furthermore, we give them cash boxes and financial diaries that are already labeled to easily keep their business's records.
This chart from U.S. Financial Diaries, a report by Schneider and colleagues, shows the dips and spikes in income of one of the families they studied.
From the financial diaries literature, we know that they need and use a broad range of financial services -something between 12 and 15 informal financial tools in place at the same time.
