Assets, Livelihoods, and Social Policy

This series "New Frontiers of
Social Policy" aims to promote social development
through systematic attention to the underlying social
context and the social outcomes of development interventions
and public policy. This book series has been conceived and
produced for the broader development community, rather than
for social policy specialists alone. This book is
particularly, although not exclusively, relevant to those
concerned with the one-third of the world's population
that still depends on the informal economy for its
livelihood. By making the case for an asset-based social
policy, it moves well beyond social welfare palliatives for
needy households toward public actions that give people the
means and opportunities to accumulate assets and have
greater control over their livelihoods. To be successful, an
asset-based social policy needs to address several
challenges, initial inequality, informality, imbalance in
asset building opportunity, and inadequate state
effectiveness, endemic in many developing countries.