Given the pervasiveness of the informal sector and the lack of adequate universal safety nets, livelihoods of the poor depend heavily on their ability to access and accumulate assets, obtain decent returns on those assets, and use their asset base to manage risks. The papers in this volume discuss the strategies adopted by people to accumulate assets through migration, housing investments, natural resources management and informal businesses and consider how an asset-based social policy could enable those strategies or help them overcome the constraints of an unfavorable institutional environment.