Bailey, Janies P.: Rethinking Poverty: Income, Assets, and the Catholic Social Justice Tradition.

Quirk, Patrick

BAILEY, Janies P. Rethinking Poverty: Income, Assets, and the Catholic Social Justice Tradition. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. 176 pp. Paper, $30.00--This book seeks to redress the lack of emphasis on the idea of asset building as a means of poverty relief in current debates. Professor Bailey's main thesis is that there is too much attention paid to income inequality at the expense of the lost tradition of "asset development for the poor."

Since the Catholic Church teaches that economics a not a value-neutral science, Bailey's approach is first to ask why we need asset building for the poor and then to introduce the major concepts of Catholic social thought in relation to property, ownership, asset-building policy, and the common good. Chapter two traces a line of thought that extends from Pope Leo XIII's stress on the virtues of ownership through Pius IX's affirmation that "private property is consistent with the natural law and that ownership implies both individual and social rights and responsibilities." He goes on to discuss, perhaps too briefly, John XXIII's and Paul VI's development of a global vision and rounds out the chapter with John Paul II's seminal social encyclicals (Labomm Exercens, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, and Centesimus Annus) as well as that pontiffs concern for the partial redefinition of ownership in an information age.

Chapter three is entitled "Assets and Human Capabilities" and begins with a quote from Martha Nussbaum's Frontiers of Justice. At this point, the author sets forth a "complementary conception" of social justice by using Nussbaum's "capabilities approach" and her "thick, vague" theory of the good. A helpful table defines the "Capabilities for a Good Human Life" by using quotations from Nussbaum's work. The chapter then draws on the work of Michael Sherridan, whose inductive approach to measuring economic health seeks to place public policy at the center of an asset-building approach to poverty relief. The behavioral and psychological benefits of property ownership are expounded upon in a thought-provoking way, as is the "future orientation" of asset accumulation and the pulling power of hope. Numerous comparisons are again made to the work of Nussbaum and also with that of welfare economist Amartya Sen.

Chapter four focuses on asset discrimination, commencing with Lincoln's Homestead Act of 1862, the sharecropper system, the Freedman's Bureau, the New Deal, and more modern issues with the Federal Housing Authority and the G.I. Bill. The discussion of "red-lining" by private banks--a discriminatory lending practice--is especially interesting.

Chapter five is entitled "Toward Inclusive Ownership"; it outlines some concrete proposals for asset development for the poor, including tax changes, individual development accounts, child savings accounts, and the recent American Saving for Personal Investment, Retirement, and Education Act (ASPIRE). There are useful comparisons with programs in other countries as well as a discussion of the political viability of such schemes. The book concludes with a short primer on modern Catholic social teaching.

Books on "Catholic economics" are always fraught with tension between a Church that endorses no particular economic model and those who seek to fit their economic model into the Church's moral framework. This book avoids such tension but arguably makes too much of Nussbaum's compatibility with Catholic social teaching. In light of the recent work on inequality by Thomas Piketty (Capital in the 21st Century, 2014), Professor Bailey offers a very useful starting point for those interested in uplifting the poor in the name of human dignity and the common good.--Patrick Quirk, Ave Maria School of Law, Australian Catholic University