OUT ON A LIMB: ‘War on Poverty’ May Have Created a Permanent Underclass, Economists Say.
America’s “War on Poverty,” launched by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, has expanded into a vast array of federal social welfare programs that today exceed $1 trillion per year.
Upon signing the Economic Opportunity Act, Johnson stated: “This is not in any sense a cynical proposal to exploit the poor with a promise of a handout,” but rather a means to “help our people find their footing for a long climb toward a better way of life.”
While poverty has declined significantly over the past half-century, however, recent reports indicate that these programs simultaneously reduced the share of private income for America’s poorest, locking them into long-term dependency and limiting their ability to move up into the middle class.
A recent study by economists Kevin Corinth and Richard Burkhauser, which analyzed poverty rates before and after America embarked on the War on Poverty, concluded that, while poverty decreased substantially since 1964, this was achieved largely by welfare supplanting “market” income such as wages, investments, and profits. In addition, before the 1960s, market income had succeeded in reducing poverty at similar rates to what the War on Poverty achieved.
As President Reagan said in 1987, “In the sixties we waged a war on poverty, and poverty won.”
