prior to his book, the prevailing view of many was that countries like india were too poor to do much about child labor or access to education by the poor, because parents needed working-children to support the family and only when incomes rose would this change. using impassive data and scholarly language, weiner's work reversed the causal direction, showing that historically (e.g. in scotland) and cross-nationally (e.g. in even-poorer africa and china), the reforms which expanded education preceded higher incomes. the 1991 book showed how india had fared worse on illiteracy and education than china. joshua cohen said the book had a profound impact in india: "here was a work, written by a friend of india, which presented irrefutable facts. it presented comparative statistics, and while it raised moral issues, it was not written as a moral diatribe."