Identity, Assets and Empowerment of the Poor: Comments on UNDP Report Released Today

Jamie Zimmerman — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:10:00 -0400

I want to flag today's global launch of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor's timely and important report, "Making the Law Work for Everyone." Co-chairs Madeleine Albright and Hernando de Soto briefly discussed the Commission's findings and this report this morning at a press conference at the United Nations as well as in their recent Time op-ed. As eloquently as they both discussed the foundations and findings of the report in a few short minutes, the full report is brilliant, powerful and well worth the read for anyone in the asset-building community.

For the asset-building field, their report eloquently provides a richer perspective on how and why wealth (among other) inequalities persist within societies. It delves deep into the persistence of poverty through lack of access to justice and such essential rights as an identity, in most countries a requisite for access to anything asset-building related - property, real estate, pensions, social transfers, micro-credit or even the most basic financial services. Essentially, the lack of identity makes this vulnerable population virtually invisible to the formal economy or society, which in turn denies them basic rights necessary for them to access the opportunities and protections afforded to and taken for granted by the rest of us. [slideshow]

I found their focus on the power and importance of assets and asset protection as a vital component of legal, economic and social empowerment encouraging and I certainly applaud it. My only disappointment from the asset-building perspective on their conceptualization of legal empowerment was their decision to discuss access to finance narrowly under their new term, "business rights." While they mention access to basic financial services here, they are essentially referring to the accessible provision of affordable micro-credit to micro-entrepreneurs, which is only a small piece of the financial needs (perhaps even rights?) of the poor.

Overall though, I found their conceptualization compelling, and their argument for this being both smart politics and economics persuasive. Indeed pieces of their arguments as well as their prescriptions for systemic change compliment, if not mirror, the foundations of the asset-building agenda - creating institutions, policies and markets that provide and encourage opportunities for wealth accumulation (or empowerment, more generally speaking) for all, not just the already-fortunate-few.

While I encourage everyone to read the document in the entirety, I leave you with a snippet from its executive summary: "Thus it is not the absence of assets or the lack of work that hold [the poor] back, but the fact that the assets and work are insecure, unprotected, and far less productive that they might be....In too many countries, the laws institutions, and policies governing economic, social and political affairs deny a large part of the society the chance to participate on equal terms. The rules of the game are unfair."

Indeed.

The Assets Baseline

Reid Cramer — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:32:00 -0400

The rise of an assets perspective is a relatively recent phenomenon. And like any phenomenon, to understand what it is you need to describe where it came from. Researchers and scientists often go to great lengths to find the baseline.

So, what's the assets baseline? There are two ways to look at this question. One is to survey the landscape of social policy and another is to describe the current role assets play in people's lives.

In terms of social policy, it is fair to say that the baseline approach to thinking about poverty and social policy is income. Traditionally, our anti-poverty programs have focused on income maintenance efforts. But beginning in the early 1990s, a number of academics began exploring the potential of assets to help inform social policy thinking. Michael Sherraden's 1991 book Assets and the Poor presented a series of hypothesis about what might happen we thought about poverty as more than just a condition of low incomes but also low assets. From the relatively simple observation that people don't spend their way out of poverty but must save resources to invest in themselves over time, has come a recognition that the dynamics of poverty must consider the role of assets and their deployment over an extended period of time. This includes a consideration of the savings process and the behavioral effects that accrue to asset owners. Even the holding of small sums can potentially make a big difference in how people think about themselves and their future.

In addition to this theoretical baseline, we need to know more precisely the role that assets actually play. Beginning in 2003, the New America Foundation was committed to providing access to this knowledge base. We created an informational clearinghouse called AssetBuilding.org that was designed to catalogue recent research, policy developments, and media coverage of a wide range of topics related to asset building. The website is still going strong and is worth checking out on a regular basis (along with the daily content of The Ladder).

We were also were interested in tracking the baseline of the assets field and have worked with scholars from the Urban Institute and Center for Social Development on a research project funded by Department of health and Human Services. The project is called Poor Finance and it is releasing a series of reports on poverty, asset building, and social policy. The purpose of the series is to assess the state of knowledge and policy development and to synthesize recent progress in these areas. In other words, it is intended to establish the baseline.

To date, four reports have been released and four more are coming. The project has produced plenty of excellent material and is a real valuable resources for practitioners and researchers alike. While the focus of this series of reports is on asset accumulation and asset-based policies for low-income individuals and families, the conceptual frameworks developed are not limited to low-income populations. This broad approach helps to identify the overall critical issues that relate to asset holding for all populations.

A few weeks ago, the latest report was released on factors that determine asset building. I was a co-author on the report and what I like about this particular report is that is reviews both the theoreitcal and empirical basis for our understanding of how people actually go about the process of savings and building assets. All of the reports are on Assetbuilding.org and you can access the project page here. Take a look.

asset buildinbg

Identity, Assets and Empowerment of the Poor: Comments on UNDP Report Released Today

The Assets Baseline