Key Socio-economic and Political Issues:
Getting Assets Right in Macro Social Analysis
Caroline Moser
Visiting Fellow
Brookings Institution
Conference on Making Macro Social Analysis Work for Policy Dialogue
World Bank Social Development Department
Washington DC
May 16-19 2006
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Background: Why are assets important?
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Objective: To identify the importance of understanding
individual, household and collective asset accumulation in macro
social analysis
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Recognition of the importance of institutions in CSAs
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But where do institutions ‘fit’ in terms of assets
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Widely referenced but multiple meanings?
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CSA have huge agendas.
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Need to identify relevance in terms of poverty reduction strategies
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Workshop opportunity – work in process on asset accumulation policy
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Current research project on intergenerational asset accumulation and
poverty reduction in Guayaquil, Ecuador
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Assets / livelihoods review presented at Arusha
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Structure of presentation
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Why are assets important?
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Assets or livelihoods?
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To show how micro-level studies can assist in moving from static poverty ‘snapshots’
to identifying longitudinal asset accumulation processes
The assets-opportunities-institutions nexus: what questions to answer?
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To distinguish among livelihood, social protection and asset accumulation strategies
Can micro data contribute to understanding macro processes?
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To identify the importance of understanding individual, household and collective
asset accumulation in macro social analysis
To explore the data needed to identify the broader institutions and opportunities that
facilitate or constrain asset accumulation
Do we need to distinguish between first and second generation asset
accumulation contexts?
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To recognize the data implications of different asset accumulation contexts
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Assets or livelihoods: concepts?
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What is an asset?
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A stock of financial, human, natural or social resources that can be acquired,
developed, improved and transferred across generations. It generates flows or
consumption, as well as additional stock (Ford 2004)
Assets are not simply resources that people use to build livelihoods: they give them the
capabilities to be and act (Bebbington 1999)
Commonalities in asset-related concepts

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Roots in poverty alleviation / reduction debates of 1990s
Influenced by work of Sen, Chambers and others on entitlements, assets and
capabilities risk and vulnerability
Consensus around a number of concepts particularly capital assets
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Physical, financial, human, social and natural capital
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Sustainable livelihoods, social protection or asset accumulation:
Is it useful to distinguish among different asset-related frameworks?
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Common concepts but differences in emphasis between frameworks
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Implications for focus of data collection, institutions and policy recommendations
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1. Sustainable livelihoods
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Livelihoods comprise the capabilities, assets and activities required for a
means of living with a range of assets needed to achieve positive
outcomes (Carney 1998)
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2. Social protection
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Public interventions to assist individuals, households and communities in
better managing risks ..by preventing, mitigating and coping with risks and
shocks’ (World Bank 2000; Holtzmann and Jorgensen 1999)
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3. Asset accumulation
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Specifically concerned with assets, and long-term sustainable accumulation
strategies. Closely linked to capabilities and power, with managing risk
relating to proactively identifying and investing in opportunities.
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Summary of policy approaches
Policy Approach
Objectives
Social protection
Provision of protection for the poor and
vulnerable against negative risks and shocks that
erode assets
Sustainable livelihoods
approach
Sustaining activities required for a means of living
Asset accumulation
policy
Creation of positive opportunities for asset
creation
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Can micro data contribute to understanding macro processes?
Asset building over time in Guayaquil Ecuador
The contribution of micro data:
Research results on the accumulation of capital assets

Physical Assets: Housing
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Housing consolidation is a priority in the first stages of settlement
There was greater consolidation between 1978-92 than from 1992-2004
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Human capital: Education
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Community and household level social capital:
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Parents make trade-offs between their own consumption and their children’s education
Gender and human capital: Girls are better educated than sons; but both are better educated
than their parents
Community social capital essential for contestation with the state for physical and social
infrastructure: once consolidated and community-based services cancelled this declined
Household social capital increased between 1992-2004 with increasing reliance on extended
family support and migration remittances
Intergenerational asset transfers
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Children benefit from their parent’s physical asset accumulation: More than half still live on the
family plot
Children have far higher expectations than their parents in terms of consumer durables: meet
the need by credit (86%); selling drugs; house and street robbery and public transport attacks
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Framework for Asset Accumulation
Asset-institutions-opportunities nexus
Assets
Strategies
Institutions
Opportunities
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The assets – opportunities – institutions nexus
What questions do we need to ask?
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To explore the data needed to identify the broader institutions and opportunities that
facilitate or constrain asset accumulation: This provides the rationale identification of:
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Institutions
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Opportunities
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The law, norms and regulatory frameworks that block, provide access or
facilitate asset accumulation. Mediating structures include:
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State, private sector, civil society, households
The formal and informal context / enabling environment within which
actors operate
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Life cycle, macro-political, macro-economic environment
Strategies
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The means by which social actors transform asset endowed into
accumulated assets
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Process is determined by individual and collective agency
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Do we need to distinguish between first and second
generation asset accumulation contexts?
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To recognize the data implications of different asset
accumulation contexts and associated institutions
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First’ generation policy
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Provision of social and economic infrastructure essential for
accumulation of assets such as:
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human capital (health and education)
Physical capital (housing)
Financial capital (Productive durables)
Assumption: once provided wellbeing improves and development
occurs
BUT: Does not necessarily create conditions for further asset
accumulation
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Second generation asset accumulation
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Moves beyond traditional sectors and institutions
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Incorporates both new opportunities and risks
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Globalization, global warming and natural disasters, conflict and ‘fragile’ states,
accelerated urbanization, inequality, violence
Incorporates citizenship as basis for turning rights into assets
Recognition that assets are not static
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Constant revalorization and renegotiation over value of assets influenced by:
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Changing macro-economic and spatial environment
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Incorporation of international migration
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Transnational asset accumulation opportunities associated with remittances
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Changing state structures:
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Insecurity associated with fragile, conflict and post –disaster contexts
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Changing household and individual aspirations
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Impacts of increasing alienation, exclusion and inequality
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Second generation asset accumulation policy
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Designed to strengthen accumulated assets and ensure their further
consolidation rather than erosion
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Citizen rights and accountable institutions
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Gender-based rights of working women
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Pre-school education
Adequate childcare facilities
Human security and development
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Strengthening social justice through accountable legal systems
Empowering communities to access and contest asset-based rights
Labor rights
Incorporating human security into productive asset building
Financial institutions
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Access and insurance: to ensure financial capital further accumulates
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