Human advancements are fundamentally social, but innovations are not innate or automatic—they require work. Such social work is necessary to create effective strategies for human endeavour. This essay focuses on innovations in social policy and practise. To develop, families must accumulate resources for investments in education, experience, property and enterprise. Asset building creates conditions, outlooks, and behaviours that promote such investments. Singapore is home to many innovative social policies, and no other country’s policy is based so extensively on asset building. Singapore thus illustrates the importance of emphasizing social investment in the new social contract for the twenty-first century

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