Fifty years ago this week, President Lyndon Johnson, lamenting that too many Americans “live on the outskirts of hope,” declared an “unconditional war on poverty in America.” This will not be “a short or easy struggle,” he stated in his State of the Union address to the Congress, “no single weapon or strategy will suffice, but we will not rest until that war is won. The richest nation on earth can afford to win it. We cannot afford to lose it.”
With over 46 million in poverty today, including more than one in five children, Johnson’s promise is mocked by today’s realities.
But in reality, the war on poverty was initially very successful, reducing poverty in the United States by about 30 percent in the five years after Johnson’s speech. Many different strategies were tried and worked.
Giving the poor money directly worked: expanded Social Security put more money in the pockets of seniors, reducing poverty among the elderly from over 35 percent in 1959 to 25 percent in 1968, to less than 10 percent today. Raising the minimum wage meant that low wage workers could lift their families from poverty.
