"The asset-based approach considers links between households' productive, social, and locational assets; the policy, institutional, and risk context; household behavior as expressed in livelihood strategies; and well-being outcomes. For sustainable poverty reducing growth, it is critical to examine household asset portfolios and understand how assets interact with the context to influence the selection of livelihood strategies, which in turn determine well-being. Policy reforms can change the context and income-generating potential of assets. Investments can add new assets or increase the efficiency of existing household assets, and also improve households' risk management capacity to protect assets. After all is said and done, a household's asset portfolio will determine whether growth and poverty reduction can be achieved and sustained over time. The asset-based framework is amendable to different analytical techniques. Siegel suggests combining quantitative and qualitative spatial and household level analyses (and linked spatial and household level analyses) to deepen understanding of the complex relationships between assets, context, livelihood strategies, and well-being outcomes. This paper--a joint product of the Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development Vice Presidency and the Rural Development Family, Latin America and the Caribbean Region--is part of a larger effort in the Bank to strengthen analyses and strategies for rural development, and address policy issues and investment priorities"--World Bank web site.

The asset-based approach considers links between households' productive, social, and locational assets; the policy, institutional, and risk context; household behavior as expressed in livelihood strategies; and well-being outcomes. For sustainable poverty reducing growth, it is critical to examine household asset portfolios and understand how assets interact with the context to influence the selection of livelihood strategies, which in turn determine well-being. Policy reforms can change the context and income-generating potential of assets. Investments can add new assets or increase the efficiency of existing household assets, and also improve households' risk management capacity to protect assets. After all is said and done, a household's asset portfolio will determine whether growth and poverty reduction can be achieved and sustained over time. The asset-based framework is amendable to different analytical techniques. Siegel suggests combining quantitative and qualitative spatial and household level analyses (and linked spatial and household level analyses) to deepen understanding of the complex relationships between assets, context, livelihood strategies, and well-being outcomes.

Grassroots Approaches to Community-Based Peacebuilding Initiatives examines how change is affected in society by studying the experiences of community leaders involved in social activism in Winnipeg, Canada. Documenting the peace-building activities of a host of Community Based Organizations (CBOs), it explores how these activities are used strategically to impact conflict transformation related to issues such as racism, inequality, and extremism in local settings. Due to its combination of a theoretical foundation and first-hand accounts of actual peace-building projects, this book is a highly useful resource for understanding policy and praxis related to peace-building, and a significant contribution to the literature on peace and conflict studies and policy formation.

Focusing on pro-poor growth and income poverty, Promoting Pro-Poor Growth: Policy Guidance for Donors identifies binding constraints and offers policies and strategies to address them.

China has made huge economic strides in recent decades but poverty is still a major issue on the agenda for rural China. Poverty and Development in China analyses how poverty is recognized and measured and how people in poverty are identified, literally asking: who is poor in China? Lu Caizhen’s research compares four approaches to poverty assessment: China’s official poverty identification method, the participatory approach to poverty assessment, the monetary approach, and use of multidimensional poverty indicators. Each of these is applied to the same population of households to identify the poor in rural Wuding County, Yunnan Province. The analysis shows that there is in fact very little overlap of households identified as poor by the various means, and that choice of approach does matter in the outcome of who is identified as poor. This has implications at the theoretical, methodological, and policy levels. Lu discusses these in detail, concluding that at present, there is a need to shift away from poverty reduction strategies that narrowly emphasize income generation activities, as these are often short-term efforts. Instead, the focus should move towards a broader combination of short-term and long-term strategies to break poverty’s inter-linked structural causes.

A daunting challenge to the international community is how to go about lifting the world's huge poor population out of poverty. "Asset-based" approaches to development are aimed specifically at designing and implementing public policies that will increase the capital assets of the poor—i.e., the physical, financial, human, social, and natural resources that can be acquired, developed, improved, and transferred across generations. In this pathbreaking book, Caroline Moser and a group of experts with on-the-ground experience provide a set of case studies of asset-building projects around the globe. The authors use a cutting-edge research framework that moves beyond quick snapshot solutions to the problem of poverty. They highlight the ways in which poor households and communities can move out of poverty through longer-term accumulation of capital assets. Contributors include Michael Carter (University of Wisconsin), Monique Cohen (Microfinance Opportunities), Sarah Cook (Institute of Development Studies, Sussex), Hector Cordero-Guzman (Baruch College, CUNY), Lilianne Fan (Oxfam, UK), Pablo Farias (Ford Foundation, New York), Clare Ferguson (formerly DFID), Andy Felton (FDIC), Sarah Gammage (Rutgers University), Anirudh Krishna (Duke University), Amy Liu (Brookings Institution), Vijay Mahajan (BASIX, India), Paula Nimpuno-Parente (Ford Foundation, South Africa), Manuel Orozco (Inter-American Dialogue),Victoria Quiroz-Becerra (Baruch College, CUNY), Dennis Rodgers (London School of Economics), and Andres Solimano (CEPAL, Santiago, Chile).

Fifty years after Oscar Lewis's famous depiction of five Mexican families caught in a "culture of poverty," Caroline Moser tells a very different story of five neighborhood women and their families strategically accumulating assets to escape poverty in the Ecuadoran city of Guayaquil. In Ordinary Families, Extraordinary Lives, Moser shows how a more sophisticated understanding of the complexities of asset accumulation as well as poverty itself can help counter inaccurate stereotypes about global poverty. It provides invaluable insight into strategies that may help people in developing countries improve their wellbeing. The similar socioeconomic characteristics and economic circumstances of the Guayaquil families in 1978, when Moser began her research, set the stage for a natural experiment. By 2004, these circumstances varied widely. Moser captures the causes and consequences of these developments through economic data, anthropological narrative, and personal photos. She then places this compelling story within the broader context of political, economic, and spatial changes in Guayaquil and Ecuador. Moser describes how households in a Third World urban slum relentlessly and systematically fought to accumulate human, social, and financial capital assets. Her longitudinal account of their odyssey captures long-term trends and changes in perception that are missed in snapshot assessments. Chapters in this holistic story cover diverse issues such as housing and infrastructure, community mobilization and political negotiation, employment, family dynamics, violence, and emigration.