Microfinance's Role in Averting Health Crises

In 2004, Stuart Rutherford founded SafeSave, a money-management project in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The project eventually sparked “Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day,” a book published in early 2009 by Princeton University Press that was written by Rutherford, Daryl Collins, Orlanda Ruthven and Jonathan Morduch. The “financial diaries” included in this book illustrate, according to Morduch, that more than anything, the poor need greater access to immediate health care and the funds to pay for it. The New York University economics professor and microfinance expert suggests linking health and microfinance to create a simple insurance program for possible emergencies.

View more of our interview with Jonathan Morduch.