By Stephen K. Medvic
When President Lyndon B. Johnson declared an “unconditional war on poverty” 50 years ago, he asked not only Congress, but all Americans to join the fight. He noted that the war would “not be won here in Washington.
It must be won in the field, in every private home, in every public office, from the courthouse to the White House.”
His call for a collective effort to ease the burdens of our less fortunate neighbors recognized that the War on Poverty would have to be fought on two fronts – one programmatic and the other attitudinal. Without widespread public support, in other words, the battle against poverty would be severely hampered.
The list of programs to fight poverty that emerged in the mid-1960s is impressive: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps), Head Start, Pell Grants, Medicare, Medicaid, and the expansion of Social Security benefits. Despite the claims of critics, each of these programs has had a positive effect on the problem it is designed to address.
A recent study by scholars at Columbia University found that, without our social safety net, the poverty rate would stand at roughly 29 percent, nearly twice its current rate of 16 percent. With respect to specific programs, nearly five million people were kept out of poverty in 2012 because of SNAP. Medicaid contributed significantly to the drop in infant mortality from 26 deaths per 1,000 births in 1960 to roughly 7 by the year 2000.
Finally, more than 44 percent of the elderly would be in poverty without Social Security, more than four times the current rate of 9.1 percent. Any fair assessment of this front in the War on Poverty would have to conclude that it has been quite successful. However, these programs could be even more effective with more resources dedicated to their success.
Rather than fortify our safety net, however, some are attempting to dismantle it. Cuts to virtually all anti-poverty programs have recently been either proposed or implemented. This is possible only because public opinion – the second front in the War on Poverty – is divided.
In a recent poll on poverty and the social safety net conducted for the Center for American Progress, almost twice as many respondents had an unfavorable view of the War on Poverty as had a favorable view (43 to 22 percent).
When asked about the success or failure of the War on Poverty, respondents were split; 44 percent thought the government’s efforts have worked while 42 percent agreed with the claim that “poverty won.”
In general, the public does support government efforts to reduce poverty. In the aforementioned poll, for example, 70 percent of respondents said they support “the president and Congress setting a national goal to cut poverty in the United States in half within 10 years” while only 22 percent opposed setting such a goal.
When it comes to concrete ways to do this, however, the public prefers “creating jobs and increasing wages” as well as job training programs. They are far less supportive of investments in affordable housing and health care or in the provision of food assistance.
These poll results suggest considerable ambivalence on the part of the American people. This ambivalence is caused, primarily, by the public’s negative perception of “welfare.”
Those perceptions, in turn, are rooted in a misunderstanding of what welfare is and how it works. Numerous studies have shown that a change in question wording from “welfare” to “assistance to the poor” significantly increases support for anti-poverty programs. But what is welfare if not assistance to poor people?
The public may support some efforts to fight poverty, but they oppose help for those they deem undeserving. The view that welfare spending is wasted on lazy people is a gross misunderstanding of how anti-poverty programs work and of the poor themselves.
Space does not permit a full exploration of the realities of the American welfare system. Suffice it to say, however, that the vast majority of beneficiaries are children, the elderly and the disabled.
For the most part, able-bodied adults under the age of 65 are eligible for federal public assistance only if they are supporting children.
And the largest safety net programs – Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance – are those that people are required to have paid into before becoming eligible for benefits.
That is, the beneficiaries of these three programs, which accounted for 60 percent of the government payments made to individuals in 2011, are people who have been productive members of society.
Perhaps if more Americans understood the basic facts about anti-poverty programs, there would be more support for enhancing the nation’s social safety net.
It is undeniable that without the War on Poverty, many more of our fellow citizens would be hungry, sick, and undereducated.
Anti-poverty programs work to the extent that they are adequately funded, something the public has yet to demand.
Success in the War on Poverty, like victory in all wars, requires widespread public support. Ultimately, this battle will not be won until the American people are fully committed to ending poverty in the United States.
Stephen K. Medvic is associate professor of government at Franklin & Marshall College. He is the author, most recently, of "In Defense of Politicians: The Expectations Trap and Its Threat to Democracy."