War on Poverty

The War on Poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national poverty rate of around nineteen percent. The speech led the United States Congress to pass the Economic Opportunity Act, which established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to administer the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty.

As a part of the Great Society, Johnson's belief in expanding the government's role in social welfare programs from education to health care was a continuation of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, which ran from 1933 to 1935, and the Four Freedoms of 1941.

The popularity of a war on poverty waned after the 1960s. Deregulation, growing criticism of the welfare state, and an ideological shift to reducing federal aid to impoverished people in the 1980s and 1990s culminated in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, which, as claimed President Bill Clinton, "end[ed] welfare as we know it." Prof. Tony Judt, the late historian, said in reference to the earlier proposed title of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act that "a more Orwellian title would be hard to conceive" and attributed the decline in the popularity of the Great Society as a policy to its success, as fewer people feared hunger, sickness, and ignorance. Additionally, fewer people were concerned with ensuring a minimum standard for all citizens and social liberalism.^[1] Nonetheless, the aftermath of the War on Poverty remains in the continued existence of such federal programs as Head Start, Volunteers in Service to America, and Job Corps.

Major initiatives

• Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 -- August 20, 1964
• Social Security Act of 1965 -- July 19, 1965

The Office of Economic Opportunity was the agency responsible for administering most of the War on Poverty programs created during Johnson's Administration, including VISTA, Job Corps, Head Start, Legal Services and the Community Action Program. The OEO was established in 1964 and quickly became a target of both left-wing and right-wing critics of the War on Poverty. Directors of the OEO included Sargent Shriver, Bertrand Harding, and Donald Rumsfeld.

The OEO launched Project Head Start as an eight-week summer program in 1965. The project was designed to help end poverty by providing preschool children from low-income families with a program that would meet emotional, social, health, nutritional,and psychological needs. Head Start was then transferred to the Office of Child Development in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (later the Department of Health and Human Services) by the Nixon Administration in 1969.

President Johnson also announced a second project to follow children from the Head Start program. This was implemented in 1967 with Project Follow Through, the largest educational experiment ever conducted.^[2]

The policy trains disadvantaged and at-risk youth and has provided more than 2 million disadvantaged young people with the integrated academic, vocational, and social skills training they need to gain independence and get quality, long-term jobs or further their education. Job Corps continues to help 70,000 youths annually at 122 Job Corps centers throughout the country. Besides vocational training, many Job Corps also offer GED programs as well as high school diplomas and programs to get students into college.

Criticisms

Percent and number below the poverty threshold.^[3]

President Johnson's "War on Poverty" speech was delivered at a time of recovery (the poverty level had fallen from 22.4% in 1959 to 19% in 1964 when the War on Poverty was announced) and it was viewed by critics as an effort to get the United States Congress to authorize social welfare programs. Some economists, including Milton Friedman, have argued that Johnson's policies actually had a negative impact on the economy because of their interventionist nature. Adherents of this school of thought recommend that the best way to fight poverty is not through government spending but through economic growth.

Results and aftermath

See also: Welfare's effect on poverty

Decline in welfare benefits highlights decreased support in government for War on Poverty initiatives (in 2006 dollars).^[4]

In the decade following the 1964 introduction of the war on poverty, poverty rates in the U.S. dropped to their lowest level since comprehensive records began in 1958: from 17.3% in the year the Economic Opportunity Act was implemented to 11.1% in 1973. They have remained between 11 and 15.2% ever since.^[5]

The ‘absolute poverty line’ is the threshold below which families or individuals are considered to be lacking the resources to meet the basic needs for healthy living; having insufficient income to provide the food, shelter and clothing needed to preserve health. Poverty among Americans between ages 18–64 has fallen only marginally since 1966, from 10.5% then to 10.1% today. Poverty has significantly fallen among Americans under 18 years old from 23% in 1964 down to less than 17%, although it has risen again to 20% in 2009.^[6] The most dramatic decrease in poverty was among Americans over 65, which fell from 28.5% in 1966 to 10.1% today.

In 2004, more than 35.9 million, or 12% of Americans including 12.1 million children, were considered to be living in poverty with an average growth of almost 1 million per year.

The OEO was dismantled by President Nixon in 1973, though many of the agency's programs were transferred to other government agencies.

According to the "Readers' Companion to U.S. Women's History",

Many observers point out that the War on Poverty's attention to Black America created the grounds for the backlash that began in the 1970s. The perception by the white middle class that it was footing the bill for ever-increasing services to the poor led to diminished support for welfare state programs, especially those that targeted specific groups and neighborhoods. Many whites viewed Great Society programs as supporting the economic and social needs of low-income urban minorities; they lost sympathy, especially as the economy declined during the 1970s.^[7]

See also

• Liberalism
• Liberalism in the United States
• Mixed economy
• Modern liberalism in the United States
• Social liberalism
• Social safety net
• United States welfare state
• Welfare
• Welfare economics
• Welfare state
• Welfare's effect on poverty
• Social welfare
• List of wars on concepts
• Perpetual war
• Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor

References

1. ^ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/dec/17/what-is-living-and-what-is-dead-in-social-democrac/?page=2
2. ^ Maloney, M. (1998). Teach Your Children Well. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies.
3. ^ "US Census Bureau, report on income, poverty and insurance for 2005". http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p60-231.pdf. Retrieved 2006-01-19. 
4. ^ 2008 Indicators of Welfare Dependence Figure TANF 2.
5. ^ Table B-1 page 56
6. ^ http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/acrossstates/Trend.aspx?order=a&loc=1&ind=43&dtm=322&tf=11%2c12%2c13%2c14%2c15%2c16%2c17%2c18%2c35%2c38
7. ^ Mankiller, Wilma; Mink, Gwendolyn; Navarro, Marysa et al., eds (1998). "Great Society/War on Poverty". The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History. Boston, M.A.: Houghton Mifflin. pp. 720. ISBN 978-0-395-67173-3. http://www.credoreference.com/entry/5867648/. Retrieved 6 May 2009. 

External links

• Christian Science Monitor article
• Text of President Johnson's special address to Congress
• U.S. 2003 Census Report
• The U.S. Social Security Administration
• Economist.com
• NPR article about War on Poverty
• Article and photo describing launch of War on Poverty