Robert Samuelson January 12, 2014

We are awash in retrospectives of the War on Poverty, launched 50 years ago this month by Lyndon Johnson. A furious debatehas developed between those (mostly liberals) who consider the war animportant, if incomplete, triumph and those (mostly conservatives) whojudge it a wasteful defeat. In reality, we both won and lost the War onPoverty. This is an ambiguous truth that our acrimonious politicalculture has trouble accepting.

We won in the sense that programs for the poor have dramatically reducedhardship and kept millions from destitution. To those who think thatWashington mainly serves “fat cats,” Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution says: Look at the numbers. In 2011, he estimates, federal spending dedicated to the poor averaged $13,000 for every person below the federal poverty line, now $23,000 for a family of four.

Similarly, the Congressional Budget Office reports that, in inflation-adjusteddollars, spending on the largest “means-tested” programs (eligibilityset by low income) increased from $55 billion in 1972 to $588 billion in 2012. Most of these programs — including Medicaid, the earned-income taxcredit (EITC) and Pell college grants — didn’t exist in 1964. Theyrepresent a sixth of federal spending and 4 percent of the economy(gross domestic product), up from 1 percent in 1972. Even thissignificantly understates spending on the poor, because it omits SocialSecurity and Medicare benefits, which also go to the non-poor.

The War on Poverty is often branded a failure because the share ofAmericans below the official poverty line has barely budged. In 1982, at the end of a harsh recession, it was 15 percent. In 2010, after the Great Recession, it was 15 percent.

The trouble is that the official poverty rate is a lousy indicator ofpeople’s material well-being. It misses all that the poor get — theirtotal consumption. It counts cash transfers from government but not non-cash transfers (food stamps, school lunches) and tax refunds under the EITC. Some income is underreported; also, theofficial poverty line overstates price increases and, therefore,understates purchasing power. Eliminating these defects, economistsBruce Meyer of the University of Chicago and James Sullivan of theUniversity of Notre Dame built a consumption-based index that estimates the 2010 poverty rate at about 5 percent.

People at the bottom aren’t well-off, but they’re better off than they oncewere. Among the official poor, half have computers, 43 percent havecentral air conditioning and 36 percent have dishwashers, report Meyerand Sullivan. These advances are especially impressive because themassive immigration of unskilled Hispanic workers inflated the ranks ofthe poor. From 1990 to 2007, the entire increase in official poverty was among Hispanics.

But this wasn’t the war LBJ envisioned; unfortunately, we lost that war,which aimed to catapult the poor into the economic mainstream. The rootproblem, Johnson said, was that many poor didn’t have “a fair chance to develop their owncapacities.” Government would remove the obstacles holding them backthrough “better schools . . . health . . . training.” Thus liberated, most poor people would become more productive,independent and middle class. A phrase at the time was “a hand up, not a handout.”

This failed dismally. The United States remains a tiered society withmillions at the bottom still living more chaotic and vulnerable lives.Government’s capacity to boost them into the mainstream was oversold.Although Head Start produces some gains for 3- and 4-year-olds, improvements dissipate quickly; one study found most disappeared by third grade. Schools arecontinually “reformed” because they don’t produce better results. TheWar on Poverty became the welfare state.

Worse, the breakdown of marriage and spread of single-parent householdssuggest that poverty may grow. From 1963 to 2012, the share of familieswith children under 18 headed by a single parent tripled to 32 percent. It’s 26 percent among whites, 34 percent among Hispanics and 59 percent among African Americans. Just why is murky. Low-incomemen may flunk as attractive marriage mates. Or, “women can liveindependently more easily rather than put up with less satisfactorymarriages,” as Brookings’sIsabel Sawhill says. Regardless of the causes and despite many exceptions, children insingle-parent households face a harder future. They’re more likely todrop out of school, get pregnant before age 20 or be unemployed. Poverty becomes self-perpetuating.

The War on Poverty’s success at strengthening the social safety net — aboon in the Great Recession — should not obscure its failure as anengine of self-improvement. Government is fairly good at handing outmoney; it’s less good at changing behavior. The two roles intersect. Ifthe safety net is too generous, it will weaken work incentives. If it’stoo stingy, it will condone suffering. This tale of two wars has leftthe fight against poverty in a costly and unsatisfying stalemate.

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