![Signing of the EOA](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Signing_of_the_EOA.jpg)
The war on poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by
United States President
The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United State ...
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
during his
State of the Union address
The State of the Union Address (sometimes abbreviated to SOTU) is an annual message delivered by the president of the United States to a joint session of the United States Congress near the beginning of each calendar year on the current conditio ...
on January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national
poverty
Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little income. Poverty can have diverse social, economic, and political causes and effects. When evaluating poverty in ...
rate of around nineteen percent. The speech led the
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...
to pass the
Economic Opportunity Act
The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 () authorized the formation of local Community Action Agencies as part of the War on Poverty. These agencies are directly regulated by the federal government. "It is the purpose of The Economic Opportunity Ac ...
, which established the
Office of Economic Opportunity
The Office of Economic Opportunity was the agency responsible for administering most of the War on Poverty programs created as part of United States President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society legislative agenda. It was established in 1964 as an i ...
(OEO) to administer the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty. The forty programs established by the Act were collectively aimed at eliminating poverty by improving living conditions for residents of low-income neighborhoods and by helping the poor access economic opportunities long denied from them.
As a part of the
Great Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The term was first coined during a 1964 commencement address by President Lyndon B. Johnson at the University ...
, Johnson believed in expanding the federal government's roles in education and health care as
poverty reduction
Poverty reduction, poverty relief, or poverty alleviation, is a set of measures, both economic and humanitarian, that are intended to permanently lift people out of poverty.
Measures, like those promoted by Henry George in his economics clas ...
strategies. These policies can also be seen as a continuation of
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
's
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...
, which ran from 1933 to 1937, and Roosevelt's
Four Freedoms
The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Monday, January 6, 1941. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), he proposed four fundamental freed ...
of 1941. Johnson stated, "Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it".
The war on poverty was heavily criticized by conservatives and has been treated as an "idealistic touchstone" by liberals for decades, although some liberals felt that the war on poverty did not go far enough with its reforms.
The legacy of the war on poverty policy initiative remains in the continued existence of such federal government programs as
Head Start,
Volunteers in Service to America
AmeriCorps VISTA is a national service program designed to alleviate poverty. President John F. Kennedy originated the idea for VISTA, which was founded as Volunteers in Service to America in 1965, and incorporated into the AmeriCorps network of ...
(VISTA),
TRiO, and
Job Corps
Job Corps is a program administered by the United States Department of Labor that offers free education and vocational training to young men and women ages 16 to 24.
Mission and purpose
Job Corps' mission is to help young people ages 16 throug ...
.
Deregulation, growing criticism of the
welfare state
A welfare state is a form of government in which the state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal opportunity, equitabl ...
, and an ideological shift to reducing federal aid to impoverished people in the 1980s and 1990s culminated in the
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is a United States federal law passed by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The bill implemented major changes to ...
of 1996, which President
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
claimed "ended welfare as we know it."
Major initiatives
![President Johnson poverty tour](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/President_Johnson_poverty_tour.jpg)
*
The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964
The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 () authorized the formation of local Community Action Agencies as part of the War on Poverty. These agencies are directly regulated by the federal government. "It is the purpose of The Economic Opportunity Ac ...
which created the
Community Action Program
In the United States and its territories, Community Action Agencies (CAA) are local private and public non-profit organizations that carry out the Community Action Program (CAP), which was founded by the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act to fight p ...
,
Job Corps
Job Corps is a program administered by the United States Department of Labor that offers free education and vocational training to young men and women ages 16 to 24.
Mission and purpose
Job Corps' mission is to help young people ages 16 throug ...
and
Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), centerpiece of the "war on poverty" – August 20, 1964
*
Food Stamp Act of 1964
The Food Stamp Act (P.L. 88-525) provided permanent legislative authority to the Food Stamp Program, which had been administratively implemented on a pilot basis in 1962. On August 31, 1964 it was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnso ...
– August 31, 1964
*
Elementary and Secondary Education Act
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was passed by the 89th United States Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on April 11, 1965. Part of Johnson's "War on Poverty", the act has been one of the most far-re ...
– April 11, 1965
*
Social Security Act 1965 (Created Medicare and Medicaid) – July 30, 1965
The
Office of Economic Opportunity
The Office of Economic Opportunity was the agency responsible for administering most of the War on Poverty programs created as part of United States President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society legislative agenda. It was established in 1964 as an i ...
was the agency responsible for administering most of the war on poverty programs created during Johnson's Administration, including
VISTA
Vista usually refers to a distant view.
Vista may also refer to:
Software
*Windows Vista, the line of Microsoft Windows client operating systems released in 2006 and 2007
* VistA, (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) ...
,
Job Corps
Job Corps is a program administered by the United States Department of Labor that offers free education and vocational training to young men and women ages 16 to 24.
Mission and purpose
Job Corps' mission is to help young people ages 16 throug ...
,
Head Start,
Legal Services
In its most general sense, the practice of law involves giving legal advice to clients, drafting legal documents for clients, and representing clients in legal negotiations and court proceedings such as lawsuits, and is applied to the professi ...
and the
Community Action Program
In the United States and its territories, Community Action Agencies (CAA) are local private and public non-profit organizations that carry out the Community Action Program (CAP), which was founded by the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act to fight p ...
. The OEO was established in 1964 and quickly became a target of both left-wing and right-wing critics of the War on Poverty. Directors of the OEO included
Sargent Shriver
Robert Sargent Shriver Jr. (November 9, 1915 – January 18, 2011) was an American diplomat, politician, and activist. As the husband of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, he was part of the Kennedy family. Shriver was the driving force behind the creatio ...
,
Bertrand Harding, and
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeld (July 9, 1932 – June 29, 2021) was an American politician, government official and businessman who served as Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under president Gerald Ford, and again from 2001 to 2006 under Presi ...
.
The OEO launched Project Head Start as an eight-week summer program in 1965. The project was designed to help end poverty by providing preschool children from low-income families with a program that would meet emotional, social, health, nutritional, and psychological needs. Head Start was then transferred to the
Office of Child Development in the
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the U.S. federal government created to protect the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is ...
(later the
Department of Health and Human Services
The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the U.S. federal government created to protect the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is " ...
) by the
Nixon Administration
Richard Nixon's tenure as the List of presidents of the United States, 37th president of the United States began with First inauguration of Richard Nixon, his first inauguration on January 20, 1969, and ended when he resigned on August 9, 1974 ...
in 1969.
President Johnson also announced a second project to follow children from the Head Start program. This was implemented in 1967 with
Project Follow Through
''Follow Through'' was the largest and most expensive experimental project in education funded by the U.S. federal government that has ever been conducted. The most extensive evaluation of ''Follow Through'' data covers the years 1968–1977; howev ...
, the largest educational experiment ever conducted.
The policy trains disadvantaged and at-risk youth and has provided more than 2 million disadvantaged young people with the integrated academic, vocational, and social skills training they need to gain independence and get quality, long-term jobs or further their education. Job Corps continues to help 70,000 youths annually at 122 Job Corps centers throughout the country. Besides vocational training, many Job Corps also offer
GED
The General Educational Development (GED) tests are a group of four subject tests which, when passed, provide certification that the test taker has United States or Canadian high school-level academic skills. It is an alternative to the US high ...
programs as well as
high school
A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...
diplomas and programs to get students into
college
A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offering ...
.
Results and aftermath
![Number in Poverty and Poverty Rate 1959 to 2011](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Number_in_Poverty_and_Poverty_Rate_1959_to_2011._United_States..PNG)
Some economists have claimed that the war on poverty did not result in a substantial reduction in poverty rates. Other critics have further claimed that Johnson's programs made poor people too dependent on the government. Other scholars have disputed these criticisms. The effectiveness of the war on poverty was limited by American involvement in the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
, which consumed the country's economic resources.
In the decade following the 1964 introduction of the war on poverty, poverty rates in the U.S. dropped to their lowest level since comprehensive records began in 1958: from 17.3% in the year the Economic Opportunity Act was implemented to 11.1% in 1973. They have remained between 11 and 15.2% ever since. It is important to note, however, that the steep decline in poverty rates began in 1959, 5 years before the introduction of the war on poverty (see figure 4 below).
A 2019 National Bureau of Economic Research paper found that according to Johnson's standard of poverty, the poverty rate declined from 19.5 percent in 1963 to 2.3 percent in 2017.
The 'absolute poverty line' is the threshold below which families or individuals are considered to be lacking the resources to meet the basic needs for healthy living—namely, having insufficient income to provide the food, shelter and clothing needed to preserve health. Poverty among Americans between ages 18–64 has fallen only marginally since 1966, from 10.5% then to 10.1% today. Poverty has significantly fallen among Americans under 18 years old from 23% in 1964 down to less than 17%, although it has risen again to 20% in 2009.
The most dramatic decrease in poverty was among Americans over 65, which fell from 28.5% in 1966 to 10.1% today.
In 2004, more than 35.9 million, or 12% of Americans including 12.1 million children, were considered to be living in poverty with an average growth of almost 1 million per year. According to the
Cato Institute
The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries.Koch Indust ...
, a libertarian think tank, since the Johnson Administration, almost $15 trillion has been spent on welfare, with poverty rates being about the same as during the Johnson Administration. A 2013 study published by
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
asserts that without the
social safety net
The social safety net (SSN) consists of non-contributory assistance existing to improve lives of vulnerable families and individuals experiencing poverty and destitution. Examples of SSNs are previously-contributory social pensions, in-kind and fo ...
, the poverty rate would have been 29% for 2012, instead of 16%. According to
OECD
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate e ...
data from 2012, the poverty rate before taxes and
transfers was 28.3%, while the poverty rate after taxes and transfers fell to 17.4%.
Nixon attacked Job Corps as an ineffective and wasteful program during his 1968 presidential campaign and sought to substantially cut back the program upon taking office in 1969. The OEO was dismantled by President Reagan in 1981, though many of the agency's programs were transferred to other government agencies.
According to the ''Readers' Companion to U.S. Women's History'',
Many observers point out that the war on poverty's attention to Black America created the grounds for the backlash that began in the 1970s. The perception by the white middle class that it was footing the bill for ever-increasing services to the poor led to diminished support for welfare state programs, especially those that targeted specific groups and neighborhoods. Many whites viewed Great Society programs as supporting the economic and social needs of low-income urban minorities; they lost sympathy, especially as the economy declined during the 1970s.
United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare
The United States secretary of health and human services is the head of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, and serves as the principal advisor to the president of the United States on all health matters. The secretary is ...
under President
Jimmy Carter
James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he previously served as th ...
,
Joseph A. Califano, Jr. wrote in 1999 in an issue of the ''
Washington Monthly
''Washington Monthly'' is a bimonthly, nonprofit magazine of United States politics and government that is based in Washington, D.C. The magazine is known for its annual ranking of American colleges and universities, which serves as an alternat ...
'' that:
The fallout and backlash from the war on poverty gave way to what Kaaryn Gustafson called the criminalization of poverty. As white middle-class Americans became more disgruntled about the “government handouts” that Black low-income communities were receiving, policymakers and legislators took action to respond to their concerns. This led to more substantial restrictions on welfare and the policing of recipients of government assistance. The resentment that middle-class Americans harbored against communities on welfare translated into anti-welfare fraud policies that disproportionately targeted low-income Black communities and failed at responding to the most egregious forms of fraud.
In waging the war on poverty, congressional opposition was too strong to pass an income maintenance law. So LBJ took advantage of the biggest automatic cash machine around: Social Security. He proposed, and Congress enacted, whopping increases in the minimum benefits that lifted some two million Americans 65 and older above the poverty line. In 1996, thanks to those increased minimum benefits, Social Security lifted 12 million senior citizens above the poverty line ... No Great Society undertaking has been subjected to more withering conservative attacks than the Office of Economic Opportunity. Yet, the war on poverty was founded on the most conservative principle: Put the power in the local community, not in Washington; give people at the grassroots the ability to stand tall on their own two feet. Conservative claims that the OEO poverty programs were nothing but a waste of money are preposterous ... Eleven of the 12 programs that OEO launched in the mid-'60s are alive, well and funded at an annual rate exceeding $10 billion; apparently legislators believe they're still working.
Reception and critique
![JamieWhitten1961cropped](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/JamieWhitten1961cropped.jpg)
President Johnson's "war on poverty" speech was delivered at a time of recovery (the poverty level had fallen from 22.4% in 1959 to 19% in 1964 when the war on poverty was announced) and it was viewed by critics as an effort to get the United States Congress to authorize
social welfare
Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet Basic needs, basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refe ...
programs.
Republicans ran against the War on Poverty program.
Some economists, including
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the ...
, have argued that Johnson's policies actually had a negative impact on the economy because of their interventionist nature, noting in a
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
interview that "the government sets out to eliminate poverty, it has a war on poverty, so-called "poverty" increases. It has a welfare program, and the welfare program leads to an expansion of problems. A general attitude develops that government isn't a very efficient way of doing things."
Adherents of this school of thought recommend that the best way to fight poverty is not through government spending but through economic growth.
Historian
Tony Judt
Tony Robert Judt ( ; 2 January 1948 – 6 August 2010) was a British-American historian, essayist and university professor who specialized in European history. Judt moved to New York and served as the Erich Maria Remarque Professor in European ...
said in reference to the earlier proposed title of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act that "a more Orwellian title would be hard to conceive" and attributed the decline in the popularity of the
Great Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The term was first coined during a 1964 commencement address by President Lyndon B. Johnson at the University ...
as a policy to its success, as fewer people feared hunger, sickness, and ignorance. Additionally, fewer people were concerned with ensuring a minimum standard for all citizens and
social liberalism
Social liberalism (german: Sozialliberalismus, es, socioliberalismo, nl, Sociaalliberalisme), also known as new liberalism in the United Kingdom, modern liberalism, or simply liberalism in the contemporary United States, left-liberalism ...
.
Economist
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell (; born June 30, 1930) is an American author, economist, political commentator and academic who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. With widely published commentary and books—and as a guest on TV and radio—he becam ...
also criticized the war on poverty's programs, writing "The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life."
[A painful anniversary]
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell (; born June 30, 1930) is an American author, economist, political commentator and academic who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. With widely published commentary and books—and as a guest on TV and radio—he becam ...
, Townhall.com, 17 August 2004
Others took a different tack. In 1967, in his book ''
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?''
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
"criticized Johnson's war on poverty for being too piecemeal", saying that programs created under the "war on poverty" such as "housing programs, job training and family counseling" all had "a fatal disadvantage
ecausethe programs have never proceeded on a coordinated basis...
nd noted thatat no time has a total, coordinated and fully adequate program been conceived."
In his speech on April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York, NY, King connected the war in Vietnam with the "war on poverty":
There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor –both black and white – through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home.
This criticism was repeated in his speech at the same place later that month when he said that "and you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such." The next year, King started the
Poor People's Campaign
The Poor People's Campaign, or Poor People's March on Washington, was a 1968 effort to gain economic justice for poor people in the United States. It was organized by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCL ...
to address the shortcomings of the "war on poverty" and to "demand a check" for suffering African-Americans which was carried on briefly after his death with the construction and maintenance of an encampment, Resurrection City, for over six weeks.
Years later, a writer in ''The Nation'' remarked that "the war on poverty has too often been a war on the poor themselves," but that much can be done.
In 1989, the former executive officer of the Task Force on Poverty Hyman Bookbinder addressed such criticisms of the "war on poverty" in an op-ed in ''The New York Times''. He wrote that:
Today, the ranks of the poor are again swelling ... These and other statistics have led careless observers to conclude that the war on poverty failed. No, it has achieved many good results. Society has failed. It tired of the war too soon, gave it inadequate resources and did not open up new fronts as required. Large-scale homelessness, an explosion of teen-age pregnancies and single-parent households, rampant illiteracy, drugs and crime – these have been both the results of and causes of persistent poverty. While it is thus inappropriate to celebrate an anniversary of the war on poverty, it is important to point up some of the big gains ... Did every program of the 60's work? Was every dollar used to its maximum potential? Should every Great Society program be reinstated or increased? Of course not ... First, we cannot afford not to resume the war. One way or another, the problem will remain expensive. Somehow, we will provide for the survival needs of the poorest: welfare, food stamps, beds and roofs for the homeless, Medicaid. The fewer poor there are, the fewer the relief problems. Getting people out of poverty is the most cost-effective public investment."
On March 3, 2014, as Chairman of the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives,
Paul Ryan
Paul Davis Ryan (born January 29, 1970) is an American former politician who served as the List of Speakers of the United States House of Representatives, 54th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019. A member o ...
released his "
The War on Poverty: 50 Years Later" report, asserting that some of 92 federal programs designed to help lower-income Americans have not provided the relief intended and that there is little evidence that these efforts have been successful.
At the core of the report were recommendations to enact cuts to welfare, child care, college Pell grants and several other federal assistance programs.
In the appendix titled "Measures of Poverty", when the poverty rate is measured by including non-cash assistance from food stamps, housing aid and other federal programs, the report states that these measurements have "implications for both conservatives and liberals. For conservatives, this suggests that federal programs have actually decreased poverty. For liberals, it lessens the supposed need to expand existing programs or to create new ones."
Several economists and social scientists whose work had been referenced in the report said that Ryan either misunderstood or misrepresented their research.
See also
*
Modern liberalism in the United States
Modern liberalism in the United States, often simply referred to in the United States as liberalism, is a form of social liberalism found in American politics. It combines ideas of civil liberty and equality with support for social justice an ...
*
Social programs in the United States
Social programs in the United States are programs designed to ensure that the basic needs of the American population are met. Federal and state social programs include cash assistance, health insurance, food assistance, housing subsidies, en ...
* ''
The Other America
''The Other America'' () is Michael Harrington's best known and likely most influential book. He was an American democratic socialist, writer, political activist, political theorist, professor of political science, radio commentator, and foundin ...
''
*
Welfare economics
Welfare economics is a branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to evaluate well-being (welfare) at the aggregate (economy-wide) level.
Attempting to apply the principles of welfare economics gives rise to the field of public econ ...
Footnotes
Further reading
* Martha J. Bailey and Sheldon Danziger (eds.), ''Legacies of the War on Poverty''. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2013. .
* Elizabeth Hinton. ''From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America''.
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retirem ...
, 2016. .
* Annelise Orleck and Lisa Gayle Hazirjian (eds.), ''The War on Poverty: A New Grassroots History, 1964–1980''. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2011. .
External links
Text of President Johnson's special address to Congress in which he uses the words "war against poverty" six times*
ttp://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3146724 "The other planet"– ''
The Economist
''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econo ...
''
NPR article about war on povertyUVA Professor Kent G. Germany's article about the war on poverty
LKLP Community Action Partnership's article about the 'war on poverty
About a call President Johnson gave a congressman asking for helping on passing a poverty bill and more
Notes for a 1995 movie titled ''America's War on Poverty''''The War on Poverty 50 Years Later: A Progress Report''–
Council of Economic Advisers
The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is a United States agency within the Executive Office of the President established in 1946, which advises the President of the United States on economic policy. The CEA provides much of the empirical resea ...
''Fighting poverty revisited: What did researchers know 40 years ago? What do we know today?''Sheldon Danziger (2007), University of Wisconsin–Madison.
1964 State of the Union Address (full video and audio at www.millercenter.org)
{{State of the Union
1964 in American politics
88th United States Congress
Affordable housing
Speeches by Lyndon B. Johnson
Great Society programs
January 1964 events in the United States
Poverty in the United States
Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson
State of the Union addresses
Metaphors referring to war and violence
United States federal policy