This essay is about the economic lives of the extremely poor: the choices they face, the constraints they grapple with, and the challenges they meet. The available evidence on the economic lives of the extremely poor is incomplete in many important ways. However, a number of recent data sets and a body of new research have added a lot to what we know about their lives, and taken together there is enough to start building an image of the way the extremely poor live their lives.Our discussion of the economic lives of the extremely poor builds on household surveys conducted in 13 countries listed in Table 1: Cote d’Ivoire, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Peru, South Africa, Tanzania, and Timor Leste (East Timor). We mainly use the Living Standard Measurement Surveys (LSMS) conducted by the World Bank and the “Family Life Surveys” conducted by the Rand Corporation, all of which are publicly available.