Dr. Kutela’s research into the effects of income variability on a family’s ability to send children to school was really interesting. I never even knew that that type of research would fall under economics, so it was really fascinating to hear about how different economic pressures, such as income variability and loan availability, can have such staggering social effects. It was also interesting to think about how these social issues could possibly have economic solutions, such as making loans more available and improving investment from mostly private companies. I had always considered it more of a government responsibility because I’m coming from an American perspective where we usually rely on government intervention to right these kind of social and economic inequalities. It’s interesting thinking about how to solve such problems without a strong central government, especially since when the U.S. faced similar problems, they were solved by government-backed insurance policies, instead of loans.