Failure of the War on 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. M

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e bottom 20 percent of households. By 1992, the wealthier households received 11 times the income of poor households. The United States has the highest inequality of income rate in the industrialized world (Thomas, 1995, p. 62D). The widening gap between the rich and poor has contributed to an overall feeling of demoralization among Americans. Once perceived as the land of opportunity, many citizens no longer believe that their economic potential is unlimited. In 1966, a public opinion poll found that 45 percent of the public viewed America as a country where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; by the late 1980s, 81 percent of the public held that opinion (Ford, 1989, p. 5). The gap between wages for workers with college degrees and those holding high school degrees is another contributing factor in poverty. A study of 30-year-old male workers found that in the late 1970s, college graduates earned 20 percent more than high school graduates. By 1995, that gap had widened to 50 percent. Further, college graduates with technical training tend to earn higher wages than their non-technically trained counterparts. Despite the alarming nature of the earnings gap between college graduates and high school graduates, on
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Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)