Could you live on $1 a day? In New York City, probably not. What about in rural Guatemala? Inspired by The Portfolios of the Poor, four American college students attempted to do just that. They spent nine weeks living and working in a rural Guatemalan village. Their goal? To understand and document how the world's poor, quite literally, live on a dollar a day.
Their first step was to try to replicate the living conditions of poor farmers by taking a microfinance loan of $300, using it to rent a plot of land on which they grew crops to repay the loan installments. And these guys did their homework: to simulate the "triple whammy" of poverty (low incomes, irregular and unpredictable incomes, and lack of financial tools) they received their daily "income" in randomly determined installments. This meant that on some days they received more than a dollar, on other days less, and on some days, nothing at all.
Learn more in the videos below on about their website.