It's popular in conservative circles to quip, "We fought a war on poverty and poverty won."
Except it didn't. Yes, poverty rates are still way too high, especially for kids and minorities, but when we fought, we made significant progress against the enemy: economic deprivation amidst plenty. And when we ceded the field, the enemy advanced.
These important issues will be the subject of a conference hosted by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities along with Demos, the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy and the American Prospect. The goal is to examine poverty, the economic and demographic conditions that raise or lower it, and the policies designed to fight it in the United States since Michael Harrington's 1962 path breaking book, The Other America.
It has been fifty years since Harrington's exposé shed light on a side of America that many people didn't know existed. A world where babies died from malnourishment, seniors faced destitution when they were no longer able to work, and millions of families lived in substandard housing- often without indoor plumbing and running water.
In 1964 President Lyndon Johnson announced an "unconditional war on poverty in America." The reforms that followed in the coming years including the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, stronger food stamp and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), or welfare, programs, and enormous improvements in education including the creation of the Head Start program, helped to expand opportunity and reduce poverty -- under the official poverty measure, which only counts cash income -- by half between 1959 and 1973.
Here's one piece of simple evidence clearly revealing that the "we lost" quip is flat out wrong. It's the time series of poverty rates of the elderly population (65+) from 1959 through 2010 (the Census Bureau has a data point for 1959--35.2%-and is then missing data until 1966, when the rate was 28.5%; I plugged in a linear interpolation between those years). When we undertook to use social policy, largely through increased Social Security benefits, to bring down elderly poverty, we kicked poverty's butt, from more than 35% in 1935 down to 15% in 1974, and settling into a 10% rate by the mid-1990s.
We can certainly have good arguments about whether even a 10% elderly poverty rate in the US should be acceptable. But it's a whole lot better than 35%.
Source: Census Bureau; * Data for 1960-1965 interpolated as explained in text.
Tomorrow, my colleagues at CBPP, Robert Greenstein and LaDonna Pavetti, will join panelists from across the political spectrum to discuss the efforts we have taken over the past fifty years to reduce poverty, what we need to do to further hammer away at it, and what the face of poverty looks like in the 21st Century.
And you can watch the webcast, beginning at 9AM tomorrow here!
These days, too much of what passes for poverty policy are discussions of which safety net programs to cut. Well, fifty years after The Other America, it makes sense to step back and reflect on how far we've come, how effective our efforts have been, and how much further we have to go.
This post originally appeared at Jared Bernstein's On The Economy blog.
Follow Jared Bernstein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@econjared
So he announced the war in 1964. And the real spending and enactment of these reforms began in later years. Yet we'll credit those reforms for helping reduce poverty in 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964 and 1965?
The fact is, poverty had been dropping since 1950, during the post-war boom. And that rate of decline even accelerated in the early 60s - coinciding with the Kennedy tax cuts and continued economic growth. The rate of decline only leveled off AFTER the Great Society legislation and spending really kicked in - coinciding with our transition from net EXPORTERS to net IMPORTERS and perpetual deficit-spenders.
Poverty was reduced over decades as a by-product of a healthy, productive, manufacturing-based economy that provided jobs. Poverty declines then stagnated over the following decades as a by-product of an unhealthy, financialized, globalized, consumption-based, welfare-state economy that realized phony growth by way of excessive credit expansion.
http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/does-the-war-on-poverty-fight-destitution-or-subsidize-it/
I mean Medicare eligibility entitlements is worth AT LEAST $35k a year - so when we look at the big picture here - even that 10% listed as Elderly in Poverty is making $50k a year. That is not poverty.
While the national treasury was depleted, their personal wealth increased.
The guys at the top have been writing the rules in their own favor for decades.
They have been insulated from and blind to the problems plaguing the middle and working classes.
Nothing will change if Republicans gain power.
They are hoping for a payoff to help them pay their bills.
It's desperation, not boredom.
Americans then saw a record decline in wealth during the GOP Recession. The median wealth of American families dropped from $126,400 (2007) to $77,300 (2010) and the bottom 25% had their net worth drop $14,800 (2007) to $8,300 (2010), but the top 10% had a net worth of $955,600 (2007) to $952,500 (2010), a decline of less than 1%. Duke University reports that virtually all the progress made in family economic well-being since 1975 was wiped out by 2010.
Until wages are returned to the middle class there will be no sustained recovery. 70% of GDP is consumer spending. Consumers are the job creators.
More jobs were lost in the recession of 2007-09 than the previous four recessions combined. There were six million jobs outsourced under Bush and then we lost 8.5 million jobs under the recession the GOP passed to the current administration.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/us/extreme-poverty-is-up-brookings-report-finds.html
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2011/1103_poverty_kneebone_nadeau_berube.aspx
And the republican solution would be to gut all safety net programs.
And THEY whine about entitlements.
Hysterical, if it weren't so sad.
I sort of remember that day we celebrate... Oh ya, Thanksgiving. Now that was a group that suffered from tremendous poverty.
It was about being grateful for what you had, not a celebration of abundance.