In his first State of the Union address, Lyndon Johnson declared an “all-out war on human poverty and unemployment in these United States.” Fifty years later, one of the few points on which Republicans and Democrats agree is that the war has failed.
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)
