Communities and Social Policy Issues: Persistent Poverty, Economic Inclusion, and Asset Building

Communities and Social Policy Issues: Persistent Poverty, Economic Inclusion, and Asset Building

The struggle against poverty, and more broadly, the pursuit of social and economic justice, is an important element of community practice. For this reason, an understanding of social policy addressing poverty and social inequality is essential. Such an understanding informs community practice in several ways. First, it incorporates an analysis of the values and interests that shape the various perspectives on the causes and consequences of poverty and thus the structure of antipoverty policy (Parsons, 1995). Equipped with knowledge concerning the policy environment, community practitioners are in a better position to plan viable strategies for social change. According to Fisher, to be effective, “every organizer should have as good a grasp as possible of the challenges and opportunities in the larger political economic context” (2001, p. 100). Second, information related to the policy context helps us ascertain how to integrate community practice and social policy approaches to alleviate poverty and social inequality. Of particular interest in this chapter are approaches encompassing economic opportunity and asset building. Asset building is a new direction in public policy and community development for expanding economic opportunity. Its goal is to connect the poor to the kind of asset-based policies and community strategies that already benefit the non-poor, such as home ownership and retirement savings accounts. [Page 104]The reasoning is that, like everyone else, people who are poor must save and invest if they are to develop out of poverty.

This chapter characterizes the policy context of community practice by providing an analysis of antipoverty policy in the United States. We begin by describing the current prevalence of poverty in the country, including dominant factors framing the demographic profile of people in poverty. Next, we explore the political discourse on poverty and consider the ramifications for community practice. Finally, we provide a brief evaluation of social policies designed to address poverty in the current context of welfare reform and devolution. We show that strategies to address poverty in the current policy environment have failed to accomplish the goal of increasing self-sufficiency among the poor. The emphasis has been on getting welfare recipients to work and off welfare assistance, with no provisions to help them achieve long-term economic independence or to address the problems of the persistently poor. In the second part, we introduce an alternative approach to helping people escape from poverty, one that incorporates a community-level component to expand their economic potential. This approach focuses on asset building through a program of matched savings called individual development accounts (IDAs).