An economist argued the world's poor aren't short on assets, just on paperwork

Hernando de Soto calculated that the value of real estate held without proper legal title by the world's poor, housing and land nobody can mortgage or insure, vastly exceeds all foreign aid ever given to developing countries. He called this dead capital: wealth that's real but legally invisible, so it can't be turned into credit or investment.

— Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else — 2000
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