Pakistan, March 25 -- Imagine a small rural village in southern Punjab, where Nasreen, a mother of three, struggles daily to make ends meet. Her husband works as a daily-wage agricultural laborer, earning barely enough to feed the family. Despite their hard work, they remain trapped in poverty, generation after generation. Why? It's not due to laziness or a lack of ambition. Rather, it's because they lack the productive assets-like livestock, land, or basic agricultural tools-that would allow them to earn sustainably higher incomes.

A groundbreaking study published by MIT economists Clare Balboni, Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Maitreesh Ghatak, and Anton Heil provides clear evidence of why people remain persistently poor. The answer is...