Before turning to ideas and policy proposals for asset accumulation, it may be helpful to "get the lay of the land" in welfare theory and policy as it currently exists. In this chapter we briefly review the distribution of income and income poverty. In following chapters, we examine theories of welfare, federal welfare policy as it stands today, and the welfare reform debate. Most of this thinking and policy can be described as income-based. The purposes of these chapters are to illuminate the current vision in welfare theory and policy and to provide a point of departure for the asset-based information and ideas that are presented in the second part of the book. In this chapter, we very briefly review the distribution of income and characteristics of income poverty.1