Poverty Programs Work (Regardless Of The GOP Lies)

(The cartoon image above is by Joel Pett in the Lexington Herald-Leader.)

Back in the 1960's, President Johnson got his War on Poverty through Congress. While the Vietnam War kept the government from investing as much in the fight against poverty as was truly needed, the program was showing some significant success in reducing poverty in this country -- that is, until the Republicans came to power and started to dismantle that program.

The Republican changed the nation's economic policy -- giving more to the rich through tax cuts and deregulation, and paying for that by cutting social programs (including programs to reduce poverty). The rich (and the corporations) loved the new GOP economic policies, and too many other Americans were conned into believing that giving more to the rich would benefit everyone (including the poor).

But it was a silly idea, and all it did was create a huge (and growing) gap in wealth and income between the rich and the rest of America -- shrinking the middle class and substantially growing the number of poor people in this country (erasing all the gains made by the War on Poverty).

Stephanie Coontz, history teacher at Evergreen State College and director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families, has studied the poverty problem in this country -- and she relates some of her findings in an article for CNN.com. It is an excellent article (and I recommend you read it all) and I post a part of it below, because I think it contains important information that Americans need to have:

In 1963, despite more than 15 years of prior economic expansion, the child poverty rate was almost 25%. By the early 1970s it had been lowered to 15%. Between 1967 and 1975, poverty among elders was cut in half.

As of 1963, 20% of Americans living below the poverty line had never been examined by a physician; by 1970 this was true of only 8%. Between 1965 and 1980, infant mortality was halved, thanks to Medicaid and other government-subsidized health programs. The nutritional level of poor Americans improved substantially between the mid-1960s and the late 1970s, thanks to food stamp and school lunch programs. Children who received food stamps in the 1970s were less likely than children from similarly low-income families to develop diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure -- or to rely on welfare programs -- as adults.

But since the late 1970s, economic insecurity has risen again, except during the brief economic boom of the late 1990s. The resurgence of poverty is not because government programs have "gotten in the way" but because they have not done enough to get in the way of market forces going in the wrong direction.

Historically, it has required a combination of favorable employment trends and active government intervention to lower the percentage of people in poverty and raise living standards for the working middle class. During the 1960s, rising real wages for low-income and high-income workers, due in part to rapid economic growth and the spread of unionization, worked in tandem with expanding government support systems to improve Americans' well-being.

After the mid-1970s, however, the free market moved in the opposite direction. Between 1973 and 1986, the real median income of families headed by a person under 30 dropped by about 27%. The rise of single-parent families contributed to this decline, but the poverty rate for young married couples with children also doubled between 1973 and 1988. Unemployment spells became more common and lengthier.

Between 1979 and 1987, the real wages of high school graduates fell by 18%, while those of high school dropouts plummeted by 42%. By the 1980s, income inequality had begun its long rise to the record-setting levels we have seen in recent years.

Yet during this period of falling real wages, politicians began winding down the war on poverty. In the 1980s, they shifted the tax burden from income taxes to more regressive payroll taxes, slashed investments in urban renewal, housing and transportation, and cut back on services to the poor. Between 1970 and 1991, the purchasing power of the typical welfare benefit decreased by more than 40%.

For three decades, aside from a brief respite in the 1990s, the market forces heightening financial insecurity and poverty have become even stronger, but our political leaders have failed to strengthen the social safety net enough to counteract their ill effects.In 1968, the minimum wage was 55% of the median full-time wage. Today, a minimum-wage worker earns just 37% of the median wage. The median benefit for a family of three under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programs amounts to only about one-third the poverty level, and many families are now reaching the lifetime limits imposed on eligibility. . .

It is a myth that government is the problem rather than part of the solution. In 1999, Great Britain had an even higher child poverty rate than we do today. The British government responded with an ambitious anti-poverty campaign, raising the minimum wage, increasing subsidized maternity leaves and providing free preschool for all 3- and 4-year olds. Within a decade, Britain reduced child poverty by somewhere between one-quarter and one half. Surely America can do as well.