ABSTRACT
“To make chicken soup, begin with a chicken….” To create wealth in poor households, begin with assets. The recipe sounds simple enough. But a good recipe does not always make good soup, and a good idea does not always make good policy. Even if asset-based welfare looks promising on paper, it faces many hurdles between the idea and the reality, between conceptualization and application. As initial steps toward application, the purposes of this chapter are to look at policy goals, precedents, and issues; to raise questions for debate; and to suggest preliminary policy guidelines.
