Despite decades of social welfare programs, the federal government has largely failed in its War on Poverty. The failure of these programs has created a social deficit in which impoverished individuals are caught up in a dependency cycle on public assistance. Demographic changes, such as the high rate of teenaged pregnancy, have simultaneously contributed to the increase in the poor population in America and created a feminization of poverty.
Federal social welfare programs are designed to aid those individuals whose incomes fall below the poverty line. An estimated 30 million Americans live in poverty (Ford, 1989, p. 1). Federal programs have succeeded in contributing to a decrease in the number of elderly poor. Before President Johnson's War on Poverty in the 1960s, almost 30 percent of the elderly had incomes below the poverty line. By 1990, that proportion had fallen to 12 percent (Cook and Barrett, 1992, p. 21). Factors contributing to this decrease were federal programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, improved Social Security benefits, and SSI (Supplemental Security Income). Although federal programs have eased the economic burden of the elderly, other segments of America's poor continue to suffer. As one research group concluded, "During the past decade we have made virtually no progress in reducing the poverty rate among the non-elderly population" (Ford, 1989, p. 5).
In recent decades there has been a demographic shift of the age composition of the poor. More than 25 percent of American children under the age of six live in poverty; a figure that has increased by one million between 1987 and 1992. Further, three out of five of these children have working parents (Douglas, 1995, p. 16). In 1966, almost 18 percent of children under the age of 18 lived in poor families; that number had increased to almost 21 percent by 1990 (Cook and Barrett, 1992, p. 21). An estimated 12 million children in the United States ...