To no one’s surprise, topping it was Facebook founder Marc Zuckerberg and his wife, who gave a billion dollars to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The list also included other well-known figures, such as Michael Bloomberg, George Soros and Nike’s Phil Knight.

But many of the biggest givers were people who are not household names, except perhaps, in their own communities. People such as William Ridgeway, an eye doctor, investor, and Indiana University graduate, who made the list by leaving $39 million in his will to the University of Evansville, in his hometown.

Most of the other donors also founded their own businesses. Only three inherited substantial wealth.

This underscores what broader surveys have shown: People who earned their fortunes are more likely to be generous than those who did not. And that’s not just the case for the very rich. Although the 50 most generous donors gave nearly $8 billion to charity last year, ordinary Americans gave 30 times as much from their paychecks.

What distinguishes philanthropy in the United States from giving in other countries is that a very large share of the American population does it.

Some argue that wealthy donors have the ability to contribute even more than they do, and that their gifts too often go to organizations—well-financed museums, hospitals and universities—that don’t need their money as much as charities that work with needy people. But it’s their money, and making donations to organizations that are personally meaningful has a lot to do with why they give at all, just as it does for the rest of us.

However, a closer look shows that the United States has made progress in fighting poverty and offers lessons about what should be done to do better.

Poverty itself has fallen substantially. According to a more comprehensive measure than the official one, 26 percent of Americans were poor in 1967. In 2012, 16 percent were.

The demographics of poverty have changed too. When Johnson sounded his battle-cry, elderly and retired people were more than twice as likely to be poor as those of working age. Today, their poverty-rates are about the same.

In 1966, over forty percent of African Americans were poor. By 2012, little more than one-quarter were. The poverty-rate among whites was less than half that among blacks, though slightly higher than in the Johnson years.

Less encouraging: Poverty among children has been rising and falling since the 1960’s. It now stands at about 20 percent, above the adult rate.

The percentage of Hispanics who are poor has also been rising. Since the early 1970’s, half the increase in poverty reflected the growth of the Hispanic population.

Proposals that do not address the status of the nation’s fastest-growing minority-group are unlikely to do much to help the poor. Nor will avoiding the difficult issue that has left so many children in poverty: The growth of female-headed families since the 1960’s.

By tackling these issues, we can continue to make progress in reducing poverty.

Sources

“Trends in Poverty with an Anchored Supplemental Poverty Measure”  (Chistopher Wimer)

“Who’s poor in America? 50 years into the ‘War on Poverty,’ a data portrait” (Pew Research Center)