Overview

This text is about assets and the difference they can make in the lives of the poor. It expands the concept of asset building to encompass a range of skills and support systems that are necessary to lift people out of poverty. It identifies four types of asset that can represent sources of wealth for low-income individuals and communities; economic, including equity, retirement savings and other financial holdings; human, including education, knowledge, skills and talents; social, the networks of trust and reciprocity that bind communities together; and natural, the land, water, air and other natural resources we depend on for survival. It then looks at five organizations at the forefront of building assets for the poor, telling their stories through the eyes of individuals whose lives have been transformed by their work. Despite the success of welfare reform in moving people off public assistance and into jobs, few of the working poor are able to accumulate even the most minimal of assets. This book demonstrates that using asset-building programmes in combination with tradtional income-based support can be an effective means for helping milions of Americans out of poverty.

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9780815706205

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Highly recommended. --S. Pressman, Monmouth University (NJ), Choice, 3/1/2003 Owning Up: Poverty, Assets, and the American Dream will be a handy addition to the library of just about anyone who has an interest in the thorny question of how we provide assistance to the poor without delivering it in the now universally disparaged form of the 'government handout.' --Thomas Yantek, Kent State, Perspectives on Political Science Miller-Adams has done excellent research and written a book that succeeds in its mission... Owning Up should be a valuable addition to reading selections in the community development area, and I recommend it to those planning academicians and practitioners who want an overview of this new approach to empowerment. --Jan S. Wells, Rutgers University, Journal of the American Planning Association, 9/1/2003

Highly recommended. - S. Pressman, Monmouth University (NJ), Choice, 3/1/2003 Owning Up: Poverty, Assets, and the American Dream will be a handy addition to the library of just about anyone who has an interest in the thorny question of how we provide assistance to the poor without delivering it in the now universally disparaged form of the 'government handout.' - Thomas Yantek, Kent State, Perspectives on Political Science Miller-Adams has done excellent research and written a book that succeeds in its mission... Owning Up should be a valuable addition to reading selections in the community development area, and I recommend it to those planning academicians and practitioners who want an overview of this new approach to empowerment. - Jan S. Wells, Rutgers University, Journal of the American Planning Association, 9/1/2003

Author Information

Michelle Miller-Adams is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Kalamazoo College. She is the author of The World Bank: New Agendas in a Changing World (Routledge, 1999) and is a contributor to several edited volumes. She is also former vice president for programs at the Twentieth Century Fund (now the Century Foundation).

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