11 Business Books Bill Gates Wants You to Read

2. “Poor Numbers” by Morten Jerven

The complete title of this book is “Poor Numbers: How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What We Can Do About It.” Being a philanthropist, the topic of poverty is close to Gates’s heart and it should be for other businessmen, too. With CSR efforts increasing in big organizations, giving back has never been more vital and crucial especially in impoverished countries. With the help of Gates’s foundation, Africa went on a full year without Polio in 2015. This book has a 4.6 rating on Amazon from 17 customer reviews with 65% of readers giving it 5 stars.

What is the book about? Author and economist Morten Jerven, spent four years studying how African nations derive their statistics and discovered how their GDP figures were far from accurate. Gates said in his review, “Jerven uses all these discrepancies to argue that we can’t be certain whether one poor country’s GDP is higher than another’s, and that we shouldn’t use GDP alone to make judgments about which economic policies lead to growth.”