There is a great book on poverty called "Poor Economics" [1] which has a relevant point about why people choose to buy TVs: We asked Oucha Mbarbk, a man we met

There is a great book on poverty called "Poor Economics" [1] which has a relevant point about why people choose to buy TVs: We asked Oucha Mbarbk, a man we met in a remote village in Morocco, what he would do if he had more money. He said he would buy more food. Then we asked him what he would do if he had even more money. He said he would buy better tasting food. We were starting to feel very bad for him and his family, when we noticed a television, a parabolic antenna, and a DVD player in the room where we were sitting. We asked him why he had bought all these things if he felt the family did not have enough to eat. He laughed, and said, "Oh, but television is more important than food!" After spending some time in that Moroccan village, it was easy to see why he thought that. Life can be quite boring in a village. There is no movie theater, no concert hall, no place to sit and watch interesting strangers go by. And not a lot of work, either. Oucha and two of his neighbors, who were with him during the interview, had worked about seventy days in agriculture and about thirty days in construction that year. For the rest of the year, they took care of their cattle and waited for jobs to materialize. This left plenty of time to watch television. These three men all lived in small houses without water or sanitation. They struggled to find work, and to give their children a good education. But they all had a television, a parabolic antenna, a DVD player, and a cell phone. Generally, it is clear that things that make life less boring are a priority for the poor. [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007CI81IQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1#nav-subnav https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007CI81IQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...