The definition of poverty has become significantly wider than incomes during the 1990's. Today it is commonplace to define poverty in terms of assets, capabilities and several other dimensions. One of the reason for the widening of the definition of poverty is that income is an important feature of poverty, but can only be explained through looking at casual factors that lead people to be poor. An important causal element is that people are asset poor. Being 'asset poor' means having limited assets, holding assets of low value and being unable to exploit assets effectively.

Proponents of asset building argue that focussing interventions on asset poverty would fundamentally change the structures that produce and reproduce poverty. The major redistributive strategies proposed include land redistribution, education, micro-credit systems and savings systems. Those favouring market based solutions, have argued that one of the reasons why people remain poor is that there assets are 'dead assets'.

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