Professor Michael Sherraden gave the inaugural S R Nathan Professor Lecture titled “Innovations in Asset Building” on 17 February 2014. At the lecture held at NUS, Prof Sherraden discussed asset building as a social policy strategy, which Singapore has carried out with notable success through the Central Provident Fund and other programmes.

The S R Nathan Professorship in Social Work was established by the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) in 2012 to honour former Singapore President, Mr S R Nathan, who is also a former NUS Chancellor and an eminent alumnus of the faculty. The aim of the Professorship is to support the long-term goal of promoting social work education and encouraging research among scholars in Singapore and Asia on issues related to social development, poverty and asset building.

Prof Michael Sherraden, the first scholar to be appointed under the Professorship, is the Youngdahl Professor of Social Development and Founding Director of the Center for Social Development at Washington University. He is the creator of Individual Development Accounts, a matched savings programme designed to help the working poor save money and accumulate assets. In 2010, he was listed by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Both The Straits Times and NUS News have published articles on the lecture. For the NUS News article, click here.