![The 50th anniversary of the President Johnson's declaration of a War on Poverty has provoked strong views on whether it has succeeded or failed. The truth lies somewhere between. [Credit: Huffington Post]](https://i0.wp.com/www.dougsbriefcase.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/credit-huff-post.jpg)
The 50th anniversary of the President Johnson’s declaration of a War on Poverty has provoked strong views on whether it has succeeded or failed. The truth lies somewhere between. [Credit: Huffington Post]
The 50th anniversary of President Johnson’s War on Poverty has occasioned a good deal of moral exhibitionism. Liberals heap praise on the programs and flatter themselves for supporting the transfer of an estimated $20.7 trillion (in 2011 dollars) in cash and non-cash benefits from those who earned it to those who did not. And they are relishing the opportunity to denounce conservatives as enemies of the poor, motivated by ideology and spite.
Some conservatives, like the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector, are using the anniversary to declare the War on Poverty lost. Rector recently was quoted as saying that “the War on Poverty has been a complete catastrophe.”
The truth lies somewhere between. On one level, government programs have been an undeniable success. Rector himself has observed that the programs have improved living standards for the poor. Poverty is less onerous than it was a generation ago. Technological development has certainly played its part. Sophisticated new gadgets and devices are now widely available and the abundance of affordable carbon-based energy has facilitated the broad dissemination of air conditioning, cars and a wide variety of comforts and conveniences. But the role of government can’t be dismissed. Improvements in living standards among the poorest households would have been impossible without the panoply of government programs that comprise the War on Poverty.
Government has made poverty more tolerable; that is its success. Its failure lies in poverty’s stubborn persistence. After nearly half a century of increasingly higher spending on anti-poverty programs, the poverty rate stood at 15 percent for the third consecutive year in 2012, the first time it has stayed that elevated for that long since the 1960s. A record 46.5 million people lived below the poverty line in 2012, according to the Census Bureau.
High rates of poverty have withstood a 50-year onslaught of government spending. One reason is that the government has conducted its war amid social trends that resist its efforts. Some of those cultural changes have been decidedly beneficial. Social constraints are weaker, people are in some respects freer, entertainment is less formulaic, social attitudes are less rigid and in some ways less judgmental. Racism, though hardly extinct, is less prevalent, women have more occupational opportunities and lifestyle choices, and society is more tolerant, at least of practices of which it was formerly intolerant (smoking pot, for example, is increasingly tolerated, smoking tobacco decreasingly so).
These cultural changes, however, also have yielded a society that is economically, socially and politically more polarized than that of a generation ago. President Obama and Senator Marco Rubio (R‑FL) alike have expressed concern about rising income inequality and declining social mobility.
These trends have cultural roots. Social practices have changed remarkably over the past half century. The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned in a March 1965 report that the African-American family structure was becoming “highly unstable, and in many urban centers is approaching complete breakdown.” Among the causes for Moynihan’s alarm was the rate of births to unmarried African-American women, which then stood at 25 percent. In 2011, 41 percent of all births were to unmarried women. The rate of non-marital births to African American women was 72 percent; among Hispanics, 53 percent; among non-Hispanic whites, 29 percent.
The changing cultural attitudes that helped produce these results have been celebrated by cultural elites as liberating the masses from moral rigidity. Indeed they have. And that works for some people. For a person of means, marriage and children are lifestyle choices. The order in which they occur – and if they occur at all — is a matter of personal taste. There are few negative consequences whatever one decides. But to a woman trying to escape poverty, a non-marital birth can carry potentially devastating consequences. It does not guarantee a life of poverty, but it makes it statistically far more likely.
People of means can handle the consequences of perpetual self-absorption; the less fortunate cannot. The values that work for the wealthy and successful can be toxic to the poor.
The prosaic road of labor, marriage and devotion to family offers the surest route of escaping poverty. It has become the road less traveled. A return to a society that held marriage, family, deferred gratification and work in higher regard seems unimaginable. We have made our choices. Now is the time for consequences.
One such consequence is a large and growing welfare state. Another is a society that is less economically equal and mobile than before. That, I believe, explains why Krugman and others react so harshly when conservatives note that certain behaviors that arise from values that liberals celebrate tend to perpetuate poverty. They bristle at the suggestion that the triumph of their values has contributed to the inequality for which they blame others. Their support for more social welfare spending, despite abundant evidence of its limited utility, proves their liberality and worth, at least in their own eyes. The suggestion that such programs require reform is regarded as proof that the Republican party, in Krugman’s words, is “committed to hurting, not helping the poor… no matter how hard the likes of Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio try to convince us otherwise.”
Advocating increases in social welfare spending without regard to its mixed record of success provides a moral perch from which to judge others. Krugman exemplifies this moralizing spirit. Hollywood embodies it. It has become a global center of hedonism, narcissism and moral preening. An industry that 50 years ago chafed against the moral strictures of the Hayes Code today moralizes with the fervor of televangelists. And perhaps with the same motivation: it’s much easier to overlook your own sins when decrying the sins of others. Self-righteousness is the companion of self-indulgence.
Genuine concern for the poor requires dispassionate analysis. It must begin with a recognition of what the War on Poverty has accomplished – an easing of some of poverty’s worst effects – and a frank acknowledgement of what it has not – a reduction in its incidence. It must stipulate that government programs alone cannot eradicate poverty, particularly when they are confronted with cultural tides that propagate it. It must recognize that social welfare programs were largely conceived in a very different time with very different social values and must be adapted to new realities. It must be open to fresh ideas and approaches.
Most importantly, perhaps, it must be conducted in a less corrosive way. Accusing your opponents of being evil and mean-spirited is counterproductive. Republicans aren’t out to hurt the poor, despite Krugman’s declarations; nor are Democrats. Neither has succeeded in devising policies that reduce the prevalence of poverty. Both could benefit from more clear-headed analysis and less moralizing.