eating the new middle class. However, the hard core poor did not make any gains. Blacks in particular were left out of the postwar prosperity. The top .5 percent of families controlled more of the wealth (25 percent) in 1956 than they did (19.3 percent) in 1949 (Chafe 112). Few new policy initiatives were undertaken in this area during the 1950s. Eisenhower did not roll back previous social policies.
The administration of John Kennedy spoke of reducing poverty but did little. Johnson's Great Society and War on Poverty represented a substantial effort, flawed as it was by inadequate funding and gross inefficiency, to address the problems. In 1962, Chafe said that 22 percent of the nation's families lived below the poverty line, a percentage which declined by 1968 to 13 percent (242). The budgetary deficits produced by the Vietnam War, the stagflation of the 1970s and the Conservative Revival prevented further efforts in this area. Chafe said that by 1980, there were 30 million poor in America. Ronald Reagan's defense buildup, aversion to social welfare spending and high deficits effectively curtailed the adoption of new public policies in this area but did not result in the abandonment of previous programs.
Recent Developments. Cochran et al. summarized the situation in the mid-90s: "although poverty was reduced in the 1960s and 1970s, no progress was made in the 1980s or 1990s, and the incidence of poverty remains high among rac
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