Portfolios of the Poor offers new thinking about how the world’s poorest communities manage their financial lives. To uncover these intimate details, researchers designed a study in which they interviewed poor households twice a month over the course of a year, and recorded the details of how they managed their financial lives. The resulting “financial diaries” encompass data from nearly 250 households in Bangladesh, India, and South Africa, and reflect a mixed-research methodology that is systematic in data collection while simultaneously captures the complexity of people’s lives.

This note explores the following research methodologies adopted during the book’s research:
•    The financial diaries approach
•    Interviews
•    Demographics of the survey sample
•    The continuum of household research: Where do the financial diaries fall?
•    Lessons learnt from portfolio approach

This is the fourth note in the Portfolios of the Poor Briefing Notes series. You can link to the other notes below.

Briefing Note 1: The "Triple-Whammy" of Poverty
Briefing Note 2: Borrowing to Save
Briefing Note 3: How do the Poor Deal with Risk?
Briefing Note 5: Creating Better Portfolios—Core Financial Products for the Poor
Briefing Note 6: Portfolios of Bangladesh’s Poor
Briefing Note 7: Grameen II and Portfolios of the Poor
Briefing Note 8: Understanding Price
Briefing Note 9: Three-Country Analysis

These Briefing Notes were created as part of a toolkit of instructional resources for FAI and MicroSave’s June 8-9 virtual conference Reimagining Microfinance Around the World: Implementing Lessons from Portfolios of the Poor. Co-authors Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford and Orlanda Ruthven, and MicroSave’s Graham A.N. Wright moderated the event and discussed with conference “attendees” how to turn lessons from the financial diaries into real, on-the-ground solutions for economic development. The collection of suggested readings and videos for the conference can be accessed on this page.