In The Social Economics of Poverty, an eminent team of scholars apply tools of the nascent social economics paradigm to one of the most enduring and frustrating questions in economics: why does poverty persist in a world of abundant resources? Why are some people excluded from growth processes while others are not? Why do some people enjoy access to scarce resources or the efficiency enhancements associated with cooperation while others do not? Humans do not live in isolation. Observed microeconomic behavior, therefore, depends on people's identities and on the formal and informal social relations that shape their world. These behaviors subsequently affect individual and group identity and relationships, creating a system with dynamic feedback. Such systems commonly lead to low-level, stable states characteristic of poverty traps. Economists are just beginning to explore the consequences of such phenomena. Individual chapters, written by leading scholars in the field, illustrate how the insights offered by social economics might inform and enhance both the discipline of economics and the design of policies intended to help reduce the incidence and duration of poverty around the world. Book jacket.