Extravagant claims are sometimes made by the more enthusiastic advocates of asset-based welfare (ABW): for example: ‘Income only maintains consumption, but assets change the way people interact with the world . . . while income feeds peoples’ stomachs, assets change their minds’ (Sherraden, Reference Sherraden1991: 13). Hopes for such an ‘asset effect’ have prompted significant investment in ABW in the UK, such as the Child's Trust Fund and Savings Gateway, as a result of which Britain is now a pioneer of this approach to social welfare provision.

Given the involvement of the Institute of Public Policy Research, which has been a prominent advocate of ABW, it is not surprising that The Citizens’ Stake provides a generally favourable account of citizens’ stakes, i.e. ‘the proposal to endow all citizens on maturity with a generous capital grant as of right’ (p. 1). The editors are aware that ‘the empirical evidence on the “asset effect” must be treated with some circumspection’ (p. 4), and the inclusion of contributions which unpick some of the limitations and (im)practicalities involved in implementing citizens’ stake proposals helps to ensure a balanced consideration of this idea.

The introduction discusses the general principles of the citizens’ stake (CS), and some of the key questions it raises. This is followed in Part One by five chapters which analyse various issues involved in financing such a stake, including reform of Inheritance Tax, Land Tax, Stakeholder Trusts, and public receptiveness to some of these options. Part Two consists of two chapters discussing conditions which might be attached to universal capital grants, and three chapters analysing some of the different forms a CS could take. These are rather less radical than Ackerman and Alstott's (Reference Ackerman and Alstott2000) proposal to distribute $80,000 to every young citizen in America. They include caretaker resource accounts for parents and for other personal care-givers, and sabbatical accounts where employees accrue and redistribute ‘time assets’ over their working lives. In the conclusion, the editors reflect on the implications for the future development of a CS of the evidence and commentaries presented in the substantive chapters, and discuss the different philosophical bases for a CS, including the social investment, libertarian, post-productivist, and egalitarian perspectives. Their reasonable, if somewhat modest, proposal is to temper, with more egalitarian principles, the social investment approach towards ABW, which currently prevails in Britain, and extend the Child's Trust Fund in various ways as a means to establish ABW and the CS, as a ‘complement to existing welfare policy, not as a substitute’ (p. 10).

As Bollier notes in his chapter on stakeholder trusts and common assets, CS proposals raise important questions of ‘moral judgment, social consensus and political debate’ (p. 59). Perhaps due to the limitations of space, these are not given a thorough consideration in either the introductory nor concluding chapters. For example, the introduction elides some of the objections based on principles of entitlement which could be directed against the Rawlsian case for a CS. Neither is it explained what asset redistribution would accomplish that would not be achieved by increasing income equality or improving standards of welfare service. In a later chapter, Glennerster and M^cKnight argue that capital transfers may provide the capability to act freely (p. 87). However, they also conclude that the areas of welfare where this principle can be practically applied through capital transfers are limited to higher education and social housing.

The real problems for CS proposals begin when the question of public receptiveness is raised. For example, Lewis and White's chapter reports results from deliberative workshops exploring public views on the reform of Inheritance Tax. They found that ‘at the end of the workshops there remain a clear majority of firm opponents of the principle of taxing inheritance’ (p. 25). This confirms the long-standing hostility in Britain towards inherited-wealth redistribution, which is seen by the majority not as a legitimate step towards equality of opportunity, but as an unfair penalty on thrift and effort. Maxwell's anxiety that opening the debate on reforming Inheritance Tax may ‘unleash abolitionist forces that would otherwise remain dormant’ (p. 37) is well founded but too late: in recent months both Stephen Byers in the Labour Party and the Conservative Party tax commission have called for abolition of Inheritance Tax. The popularity of such proposals is further evidence that CS measures are unlikely to overcome what Maxwell identifies as ‘the serious stumbling block of weak public support’ (p. 50).

Further limitations of particular CS measures are revealed in Lewis's chapter, which answers negatively the question: ‘Carework: Are Care Accounts the Answer?’ In a lucid review of the problems and options relating to care provision, which includes the important reminder that there is a ‘tendency in care-related policies to be over-optimistic about what can be expected from one type of policy’ (p. 160), Lewis concludes that there is no case for assuming that care accounts or cash provision would offer greater individual choice or improved assistance to that provided through care support services.

In their introduction (p. 5), the editors quote Rawls’ argument for the redistribution of capital: ‘The idea is not simply to assist those who lose out through accident or misfortune (although this must be done), but instead to put all citizens in a position to manage their own affairs.’ In the UK, public opinion is not yet wholly persuaded of the first of these aspirations for all claimants, let alone ready to go beyond it. The editors’ conclusion that ‘the underlying principle of a citizen's stake, is likely to become more embedded in popular thinking’ (p. 190) suggests an optimism that is not yet well founded.