An Ivy League professor who spent 4 months working in a South Bronx check-cashing store says we're getting it all wrong

An Ivy League professor who spent 4 months working in a South Bronx check-cashing store says we're getting it all wrong:

"The three common reasons customers cited for using a check casher over a bank: cost, transparency, and service.  Lisa Servon couldn't kick the nagging feeling that the financial elite had it all wrong. The prevailing wisdom from bankers and policy makers went like this: People who used alternative financial services — like check cashers and payday lenders — were making expensive and unwise decisions. If we could just educate the "unbanked" and "underbanked" and usher them into the modern financial system with a bank account, their fortunes would surely improve. But Servon, a professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania and former dean at the New School, had spent 20 years studying low-income communities, and that picture didn't add up. Most of the unbanked, the roughly 7% of US households without checking or savings accounts, and the underbanked, the nearly 20% that had such accounts but still used alternative financial services, that she encountered were neither naive nor irresponsible about money. "

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