Humanity’s future will be shaped by the portfolio of assets we inherit and choose to pass on, and by the balance we strike between the portfolio and the size of our population. Assets are durable objects, producing streams of services. Their durability enables us to save them for our own future, offer them as gifts to others, exchange them for other goods and services, and bequeath them to our children. Durability does not mean everlasting. Assets depreciate, but unlike services they are not fleeting. Perhaps because financial capital has figured prominently in economists’ writings, the qualifier ‘capital’ is sometimes added to assets, as in ‘capital assets’. Assets acquire their value from the services they provide over their remaining life (Chapter 1).

This chapter constructs a two-way classification of assets and identifies an inclusive measure of wealth based on them. It then establishes a series of propositions that reveal a deep connection between inclusive wealth and intergenerational well-being.