Asset Accumulation: An Alternative Approach to Achieving the Millennium Development Goals

Abstract

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are unlikely to be achieved by 2015, owing to conceptual flaws in their design as well as the structural and political constraints faced during implementation at the country level. While criticism of the MDGs is widespread, innovative ideas on addressing these operational challenges are still scanty. By reviewing a number of experiences, including those of the Foundation for the Promotion of Local Development (PRODEL) in Nicaragua and the Ministry of Cities in Brazil, this article highlights the importance of incorporating an asset‐accumulation perspective into MDG‐related policies and programmes as a way of generating an enabling environment that opens up new opportunities for poverty reduction in the cities of low‐ and middle‐low‐income countries.

Voting in the UN: a Second Image of China’s Human Rights

“…By showing a willingness to embrace the existing norms, China has and will continue to benefit significantly from the existing international political economy regime, including participation in IOs. 37 For example, it is argued that the Chinese government conforms to the international human rights regime to uphold its international image. Sceats and Breslin write that, BChina's ratification of core international human rights treaties and its record of participation in the Human Rights Council demonstrate that it wishes to be perceived as accepting the legitimacy of the international human rights system and, broadly, the norms on which it is based.^3 8 Likewise, China has been abiding by the norms and rules in other areas, such as international trade 39 and nuclear non-proliferation.…”

Who Is Poorest? An Asset‐based Analysis of Multidimensional Wellbeing

“…The first reason is the possibility of capturing longer-term dynamics in household wellbeing and poverty. Most poverty-alleviation strategies, including asset-accumulation policies, are defined over longer periods or even across generations, with the aim of enabling the poor to gradually accumulate the resources and endowments needed to escape poverty and vulnerability (Cooper and Bird, 2012;Moser, 2007;Stein and Horn, 2012). Household expenditures, however, tend to be less useful to capture longer-term poverty trends, as repeat collection of consumption data is either very costly, or because one-off consumption surveys are affected by seasonal changes or economic shocks (Deaton, 1997;Sahn and Stifel, 2003a).…”

“…In addition, and increasing the complexity of analysis, information contained in asset indices can be related to interactions between household's private asset portfolios and levels of public-service supply, in ways that may point to new priorities for public-asset transfer and infrastructure-investment policies. Recent research has emphasised the important enabling role public provision of goods can play in households' assetaccumulation processes and basic-needs deprivations (Burchi and Passacantilli, 2011;Lloyd and Hewett, 2009;Montgomery and Hewett, 2005;Stein and Horn, 2012). 6 At the same time, there are strong indications that priorities between interventions targeted at public and private deprivations often differ at the local level.…”

“…Among the many aspects of poverty that have been discussed in this emergent debate, one dimension that has received particular attention involves deprivations in basic household assets. A recent contribution to this journal by Stein and Horn (2012) has argued that strategies for achieving the MDGs should prioritise policies that target the accumulation of assets like education, housing, basic services, or micro-finance. Other authors in this journal have endorsed asset-based approaches for breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty (see special issue 30(5) on Inheritance and the Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty; Barrett et al, 2006;Carter and Barrett, 2006;Moser, 2007), as well as for monitoring inequalities in economic and social dimensions of human development (Vandemoortele, 2009).…”

“…It compares different approaches for aggregating asset information into summary indices, and identifies the methods that permit decomposing aggregate indices into relevant dimensions of household wellbeing. It then illustrates how these decompositions can be used for the targeting of specific interventions that are commonly included under strategic asset frameworks (Moser, 2007;Stein and Horn, 2012).…”