Question

The White House Council of Economic Advisors recently wrote in 2018, “Based on historical standards of material well-being and the terms of engagement, our War on Poverty is largely over and a success.” Assess the strengths and weaknesses using qualitative and quantitative analysis of Johnson’s Great Society Program that started a “War on Poverty and evaluate whether the White House assessment is correct or not.

Answer 1

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 Wednesday, January 8, 1964.  This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national poverty rate of around nineteen percent.

The stated goal of the War on Poverty, as enunciated by Lyndon Johnson on January 8, 1964, was, “…not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.”

In 1964, the poverty rate was about about nineteen per cent. By 1966, it had fallen to just under fifteen per cent. Almost half a century later, in 2012—the last year for which the Census Bureau has provided an official estimate—the poverty rate is still fifteen per cent.

But the effective change in poverty is captured by "Anchored Supplemental Poverty Calculation Before Taxation and Transfers " (ASPMBTAT). This measure was designed to evaluate people's ability to earn enough, not to include taxes and subsidies, to keep themselves and their dependent children out of poverty.

The income required to do this varies by family size and composition, but, for a family comprising two adults and two children, it is $25,500/year (in 4Q2013 dollars).

The ASPMBTAT is the ultimate quantitative test of the success (or failure) of the War on Poverty, at least in terms of its stated objective. Shortly after the War on Poverty got rolling (1967), about 27% of Americans lived in poverty. In 2012, the last year for which data is available, the number was about 29%.

The real living conditions of households considered bad by the Census are shocking for most people. According to government surveys, 80 per cent of poor households have air conditioning; almost two-thirds have cable or satellite television; half have a personal computer; 40 per cent have a wide-screen HDTV. Three quarters own a car or a truck; almost one third has two or more cars.

Ninety-six percent of impoverished parents claim that their children were never hungry at any time during the year because they could not afford food. About 82% of disadvantaged adults indicated that they were rarely hungry at some point in the previous year.

Bad children are far from chronically undernourished as a group. The total intake of protein , vitamins and minerals is nearly the same for disadvantaged and middle-class students, and is in most cases well above acceptable levels.

Less than 2 percent of the poor are homeless. Only 10 percent live in a mobile home. The average poor American lives in a house or apartment that is in good repair and not over-crowded. In fact, the average poor American has more living space than the typical non-poor individual living in Sweden, France, Germany or the United Kingdom.

As President Johnson started the poverty campaign, he vowed to give the poor a 'hand up, not a hand out.' He argued that his campaign would decrease welfare rolls and turn the poor from 'tax-payers' to 'tax-payers.' Johnson's goal was to make impoverished families self-sufficient – willing to rise above poverty from their own incomes without being dependent on welfare.

What converted the war on poverty into a financial and human tragedy was that the improved welfare state created a skewed network of rewards and adjusted people to their new world.

For a decade and a half before the War on Poverty began, self-sufficiency in American improved dramatically. But for the last 45 years, there has been no improvement at all. Many groups are less capable of self-support today than when Johnson's war started.

What converted the war on poverty into a financial and human tragedy was that the improved welfare state created a skewed network of rewards and adjusted people to their new world.

The adaptation of the working-age poor to the poverty war was immediately evident in the growth of numerous social pathologies, particularly unwed childbearing. The transition of the middle class to the new paradigm took more time to manifest, but it was no less important.

And citizens with salaries well above the threshold for welfare state services have been required to adapt to the welfare state. As crime rates (driven by increasing numbers of fatherless boys) increased in towns, and urban education systems grew unstable and chaotic, the middle class (of all races) was forced to move to the suburbs.

Because many middle-class mothers had to go to work to permit their families to bid for houses in good school districts (as well as pay the higher taxes that the expanded welfare state required), self-supporting families had fewer children.

The guilty party is, in part, the welfare system itself, which discourages employment and penalizes marriage. When the war on poverty ended, 7% of American children were born outside marriage. Today, the figure is 41 percent. Today, the breakdown of marriage is the primary source of child deprivation.

The 1996 welfare reform was successful in getting welfare recipients out of work — but it was incomplete. The law impacted only one of today 's nearly 80-project-tested welfare systems offering cash, food, shelter , medical care and social services.

The poor have lost in the war on poverty. After fifty-two years, the time has come for creating a new and successful way forward.