The War on Poverty Was an Enormous Success
Ezra Klein mentioned this briefly yesterday in the course of a larger critique of a Robert Samuelson column, but it should be said as clearly and loudly as possible that conservative assertions that “the ‘war on poverty’ failed” are dead wrong. Consider the small matter of the poverty rate:
You can see two clear trends here. One is that macroeconomic performance makes a big difference. From 1982 on to the end of the Reagan administration, the poverty rate declined steadily in lockstep with economic growth until along came a new recession. The other is that policy makes a big difference. During the years of the post-war liberal consensus, poverty went down a lot. And during the Reagan years, poverty never plumbed the depths seen in the seventies or in the Clinton years. And the cause of this relatively high poverty rate even during the Reagan growth years is precisely that Reagan believed the war on poverty had been a failure and did nothing to promote anti-poverty policies.
Fortunately, it seems that these days the public is willing to support more aggressive anti-poverty measures.
45 Responses to “The War on Poverty Was an Enormous Success”
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June 2nd, 2009 at 8:33 am
As I suspect many are going to point out, starting the X-axis at 11% is arbitrary and misleading.
Also, if you want to make a point about a correlation with macroeconomic trends, it seems to me you should provide some sort of information about them in this post, perhaps on the same graph.
I say this all because this is a very important topic, and I would like to see it discussed well.
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:52 am
I agree with DTM. Bad graphs suck.
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:56 am
As much as I would love to go along wit this I must point out that the trend started to fall long before the great society programs were enacted. However it would seem that other socio-economic trends such as the GI bill, and the peak of union membership (which is now being vilified as the culprit in the auto industries demise)did have the intended effect.
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:58 am
Let me agree with the posters above. You make a good point and then completely undermine it by using an obviously misleading graph.
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:01 am
Its interesting that the poverty rate dramatically fell at about the same time that the crime rate dramatically rose. This is evidence against simple-minded claims that reducing poverty is the key to reducing crime. (I’m still in favor of reducing poverty for other reasons).
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:07 am
This is indeed a horrible and misleading graph. There is certainly a drop in the poverty rate, and it is certainly significant, but there is never any justification for using 11% as a baseline.
We would rightly mock any wingnut that tried to pull that kind of stunt.
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:16 am
I’m going to disagree with the rest of the commenters; using a non-zero baseline on the y-axis is fine. Here’s Edward Tufte, the guru of graphs:
In general, in a time-series, use a baseline that shows the data not the zero point. If the zero point reasonably occurs in plotting the data, fine. But don’t spend a lot of empty vertical space trying to reach down to the zero point at the cost of hiding what is going on in the data line itself. (The book, How to Lie With Statistics, is wrong on this point.)
For examples, all over the place, of absent zero points in time-series, take a look at any major scientific research publication. The scientists want to show their data, not zero.
The urge to contextualize the data is a good one, but context does not come from empty vertical space reaching down to zero, a number which does not even occur in a good many data sets. Instead, for context, show more data horizontally!
If the graph showed fluctuation between 13 and 11 percent, that would be one thing. But it really does show siginificant change, from 22 all the way down to ll and then back up to 15, so I don’t think it’s deceptive to use the nonzero base.
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:21 am
Just wondering….if the poverty rate was at pre-1959 levels would our immigration issues be as nettlesome as they currently are? Would there instead be a pool of serfs and ne’er-do-wells willing to toil away at mindless, backbreaking labor now performed by foreign and illegal laborers? Maybe Republicans resent the “War on Poverty” not so much because of the role government played but because it resulted in a lack of subservient citizens living in constant fear for their economic livelihood. Having “Yes, Master” uttered in Spanish lacks a certain, oh, je ne sais quoi…..
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:27 am
“Its interesting that the poverty rate dramatically fell at about the same time that the crime rate dramatically rose. This is evidence against simple-minded claims that reducing poverty is the key to reducing crime. (I’m still in favor of reducing poverty for other reasons).”
No, poverty did NOT fall at the same time that CRIME rose. The poverty rate fell at the same time that INCARCERATION rose. There’s actually a big difference; overall crime rates have remained stable, while incarceration rates have skyrocketed under Reagan, and sentences have been longer. Thus, the poverty rate is hidden, and obscured by hyper incarceration.
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:29 am
Gosh, people are so picky about the values on their axes (but I guess high standards are good).
I think this the y-axis beginning at 11% is really a big deal. Once you notice that it begins at 11% you can readily provide the full-picture.
I think the x-axis beginning at 1959 is more of a problem because one cannot infer from the chart whether the same downward trend was happening before that year.
Additionally, I would say that for light journalism (waste of time) like this, it’s inoffensive not to have correlating data to back up your claims (that are secondary to the primary claims of the article) as long as they are based on a broad conventional wisdom.
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:35 am
Matt W., Tufte does indeed make a point, but I think the case against misleading baselines is still strong. This is a chart of percentages, and 0 is not an arbitrary baseline.
Any scale you choose is to some degree arbitrary, and you inevitably trade off sense of scale for detail. However, it’s very poor form to set the baseline such that the lowest data point touches it when it isn’t 0. If the range had been 15% instead of 12%, from 8$ to 23%, then the idea that poverty actually zeroed out a couple times wouldn’t be mistakenly conveyed.
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:45 am
I’m not positive, but I think what constitutes the “poverty line” hasn’t really been adjusted for inflation over the years. Over 25k for a family of 4 is supposed to be above that line, but still seems like one would have a hard time living on that salary.
Not to say that the programs haven’t helped, just noting that it may not be as dramatic as the graph suggests.
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:47 am
I should emphasize that I appreciate the basic rules for making graphs that are not misleading. I just do not think this issue with the y-axis is such a problem if one takes the time to look at the values.
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:56 am
jeremy,
The crime rate dramatically rose in the 1960s and 1970s, and probably a bit in the 1980s as well, independent of the incarceration rate. One can most easily disassociate the two factors by looking at the rate at which people were murdered, which dramatically rose during this period.
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:17 am
I’m not positive, but I think what constitutes the “poverty line” hasn’t really been adjusted for inflation over the years.
It’s not true that it hasn’t been adjusted for inflation, but the story of the adjustments is complicated. There seems to be one guideline that was, back in the day, calculated under the assumption that families spend one-third of their income on food, and has been adjusted for inflation since then, and another similar guideline that I don’t really understand from that link. But there is a related critique of the poverty line, that poor families don’t spend one-third of their income on food anymore; for instance, housing is much more expensive relative to food than it used to be.
That article’s from 2000, so it may be out of date.
John, that’s a fair point about touching the x-axis; just wanted to point out that informed opinion differed on the question of whether it’s OK to have a non-zero baseline.
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:24 am
First, I’d like to echo the claim that the baseline is misleading. While poverty rates have come down, and we want to show that, I don’t think anyone believes that our end goal for poverty reduction is/was to bring it down to 11%, so a graph that makes it look like there’s no work left to be done once you get down to 11% is a bad graph.
Tokay: While there is definitely an open debate about whether our poverty threshold is at the right place, it is adjusted for inflation. See the Census defn here: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/povdef.html
It’s also worth mentioning that the current US poverty statistic is very broken. The measure of family’s resources is pre-tax money income, which means it does not take account of in-kind benefits or benefits that come through the tax system. This means that some of our most effective anti-poverty programs (e.g. food stamps and the EITC) cannot reduce poverty by definition. A family just under the poverty line, who receives thousands of dollars in income from the EITC is still poor. This makes many of our anti-poverty programs appear to be failing, when the real problem is that our poverty measure is outdated and does not accurately measure poverty.
Check out this paper if you’re interested in efforts to reform the poverty line: http://tinyurl.com/povmeas
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:25 am
A non-zero baseline is indeed fine in some cases. Just not in this case, at least in my view. It is a percentage, you wouldn’t be adding much more white space (if any, given the big drop at the beginning of the series), and 11% is arbitrary.
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:28 am
The chart shows the poverty rate zooming downwards toward zero prior to 1965’s War on Poverty. It then stopped zooming down towards zero and began bouncing along, often going up thereafter. The great WAR ON POVERTY also coincided with the collapse of the black family, the massive increase in fatherless children and the permanent underclass, none of which would have likely occurred without the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs. This chart totally contradicts what Yglesias claims that it demonstrates.
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:04 am
…so if we could just reduce enough people to abject enough poverty we could reintegrate the black family, eliminate the bearing of children out of wedlock, and rescue the permanent underclass.
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:14 am
Crime rate best correlates with demographics, i.e. compare crime rate with the age cohort 15 to 25.
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:24 am
I agree with other commmenters, starting the y-axis at 11% is misleading.
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:28 am
Do any of the people insisting on a zero baseline have a problem with 23% being the top line?
This is the most ridiculous objection I’ve ever seen to a Matt graph. Haven’t any of you ever seen a line graph before? They very often don’t got down to zero.
I know, let’s make hospitals graph patients’ temperatures on a graph with a baseline of zero. Otherwise, it’s totally misleading.
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:46 am
“…so if we could just reduce enough people to abject enough poverty we could reintegrate the black family, eliminate the bearing of children out of wedlock, and rescue the permanent underclass.”
This presumes that the War on Poverty cures poverty. It doesn’t. It causes poverty. People living and trading in the free market with enforceable property rights and sound money is the cure for poverty. Poor people without property rights (thanks to you do-gooder progressives) are now huddled in their homes behind bars on the windows in fear of the gangstas and the local police S.W.A.T. team.
Ever visited Detroit? All the various progressive wars have reduced it to rubble.
War on Poverty
War on Drugs
War on Guns
War on Illiteracy (inner city public schools)
War on Racism
plus paying trillions of dollars for overseas wars to spread your marvelous democracy.
Further, we now have our $50 trillion debt to pay off thanks to you brilliant progressives. Poor black people are in the state they are because of you guys. I have nothing to apologize for. You are the ones that should be begging for forgiveness.
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:52 am
I agree with this
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:56 am
Well, that clears up any confusion: Matt knows absolutely nothing about poverty policy, and the graph pretty well shows it.
The graph shows a large decline from the beginning point in 1959. The war on poverty wasn’t even annnounced until 1964.
And the graph shows declines in the poverty rate, but most of the programmatic responses to poverty don’t actually lead to declines in poverty as measured, because they are excluded from the calculation. For example, food stamps provide an income supplement, in kind, for the poor, but food stamps aren’t included in income as measured by the poverty statistics.
June 2nd, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Speaking of the depths of the Carter administration is misleading, as the poverty rate fell during the Carter administration, until the end, when Volcker’s policies came into effect, at which time it began the upward trend accelerated under early Reagan. It was the Ford administration that raised the rate during the 70’s. Also note that despite the reputation of the 70’s, the decade still ended with a lower poverty rate than it began.
June 2nd, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Showing the historical poverty trends proves very little about the role of GDP growth (especially when GDP growth is omitted from the graph). A rising tide lifts all boats is a well liked aphorism of Reaganomics that has since been debunked.
What would likely be more telling is the change in the contentiously determined census defined poverty line during this time-series or the federal policies that have either isolated or liberated the urban poor over the past half century.
June 2nd, 2009 at 1:47 pm
A couple points to make here:
1. Rick DeMint – The peak of union density did have some impact, although most low-wage industries were not being organized (with some exceptions, like the emerging service unions and the UFW). As for the GI Bill, that gets racially tricky. Katnzelson’s When Affirmative Action Was White makes a very convincing case that the GI bill made racial inequality worse, and was part of a larger policy trend whereby whites benefited from government largesse where blacks were largely shut out – as a result, racial inequality intensified between ‘45-65. As LBJ pointed out, in his Howard University speech, the unemployment rate gap had increased from about zero to about 2x, especially among youth, median income relative to whites had dropped from 57% to 53%, and so on (see p. 15 of Katznelson). The point is that while the GI bill probably did decrease white poverty, it didn’t decrease black poverty.
Rob: Poverty rates fell gradually from 22.4% to 19% from ‘59-’64. From ‘64 to ‘73, they fell from 19% to 11.1%. And in the latter period, you also saw very rapid shifts – from 19% to 17.3% in 64-65, from 17.3% to 14.7% in 65-66, and from 14.2% in 67 to 12.8% in 68.
As for the rubbish about the black family, you need to read Alice O’Connor’s Poverty Knowledge. People had been proclaiming the death of the black family and the pathology of poor families for decades, it had nothing to do with the War on Poverty. Unless you’d like to explain a causal link between Head Start and Medicaid and broken families?
And Rob, the idea that free markets eliminate poverty is ridiculous. Poverty rates change over time, according to many factors – the economic structure and environment, the political and policy order of the day, the mobilization and strength of labor, etc. But given that the free market brought us to a point in 1933 where 29% of the population was earning about a third of the current poverty line, and another 23% were earning from a third to the poverty, I don’t think you’ve got a leg to stand on. Hell, even before the Great Depression, you can take a look at the U.S Commission on Industrial Relation’s studies from 1913-1915 that found that found that 4/5ths of American men earned less than $800 a year ($17k in 2009 dollars, or in other words, enough to lift a family out of poverty), than 1/2 of American men earned less than $600 a year ($13k in 2009), and that 25% of American men earned less than $400 a year ($8k a year).
Free markets and poverty absolutely can co-exist. It took social movements like the labor movement and public policy efforts like the New Deal to bring us to a situation where “only” 22.4% of the population lived in poverty, and social movements like the Civil Rights Movement and policy efforts like the Great Society to bring us to a situation where “only” 11% of the population lived in poverty.
Moreover, the War on Drugs, or our various overseas wars, were and are not policies of progressives. Conflating them while simultanteously ignoring the impact of automation, deindustrialization, globalization, white flight, the shift of employers from the cities to the suburbs, etc. is intellectually dishonest.
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:38 pm
[...] campaign that George H. Bush performed. But it’s also important to note that at the time the poverty rate was relatively low, Reagan was still very popular and so Bush surfed that wave. It’s very hard to beat the [...]
June 2nd, 2009 at 3:14 pm
[...] Brendan Nyhan sends me a link to this chart which shows the changes in poverty rate in more detail than the graph I posted this morning. [...]
June 2nd, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Speaking of the depths of the Carter administration is misleading, as the poverty rate fell during the Carter administration, until the end, when Volcker’s policies came into effect, at which time it began the upward trend accelerated under early Reagan.
You’re right, but I think that’s what Yglesias meant to say; when he said “plumbed the depths,” he meant “reached its lowest point” (around 11%). In this case “plumbing the depths” was a good thing — poverty was never as low under Reagan as it was under Clinton and Carter, in part (so Matt claims) because Reagan didn’t promote anti-poverty programs.
I had meant to complain about how misleading that formulation was, but I got sidetracked. [wink emoticon]
June 2nd, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Matt W:
It’s not just that Reagan didn’t promote them – he cut them substantially.
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:08 pm
What’s astonishing to me is that no one in this article or any of the linked articles thinks to explain or interrogate exactly what the poverty line/rate is, or how ridiculous and arbitrary a measurement of poverty and living conditions it is. If you care about poverty start with defining exactly what it means, not with crunching numbers and generating graphs.
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Jake, that’s probably because talking about the line itself is a whole additional conversation in its own right. Furthermore I see 4 comments that do address the issue of the poverty line.
However, if we’re talking about historical trends, you have to use the data that’s there. The historical data that’s there is the data done by the U.S government using its own poverty line as the definition; if you have a different measure you’d like to use, it’s not hard to use the aforesaid data, adjust it to fit your definition, and produce the new historical data and talk about trends within it.
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Bob Roddis (23) said: Ever visited Detroit? All the various progressive wars have reduced it to rubble.
I suspect that the loss of a million jobs (shipped overseas by free-market, profit-loving conservatives) had a much larger effect on Detroit than anything the progressives ever did.
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:59 pm
I suspect this is the source graph
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/povertyrate.html
This appears to be the source data
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html
Among other things, the census.gov site poverty date seem to start at 1959, which I rather suspect is the reason why there is no 1958 data….
I do believe the graph should be zero based, but not doing so is quite common.
June 2nd, 2009 at 6:29 pm
rE: All the various progressive wars have reduced it to rubble.
Nonsenes. Detroit’s collapse was largely the work of one man, Mayor Coleman Young, whose only ideology was himself. Combining almost Third World levels of incompetence and corruption, Young ran the city into the ground, and his successors have followed his lead (put in a fine print exception for Dennis Archer though).
Re: Further, we now have our $50 trillion debt to pay off thanks to you brilliant progressives.
Huh? The national debt is NOT 50 trillion. If you want to be taken seriously do not pull numbers out of your nether orifice. Moreoevr who ran up most of our public debt? I believe their names were Reagan, and Bush. If they qualify as “progressives” I am Chairman Mao.
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Matt w. – hard to say now because it looks like Matt Y changed the text without noting it. I could have sworn it said Carter before, but does not now.
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:13 pm
As for the rubbish about the black family, you need to read Alice O’Connor’s Poverty Knowledge. People had been proclaiming the death of the black family and the pathology of poor families for decades, it had nothing to do with the War on Poverty.
That’s simply false. Black illegitimacy was always higher than white illegitimacy, but it was still fairly small by current standards. From 1940 to 1960 it went from 19 percent to 22 percent, not a huge increase. From 1960 to 1980 it increased to 48 percent. By 2004 it was around 68 percent.
The fact that people have been proclaiming the pathology of poor families and the “death of the black family” for decade does not change the fact that after the poverty programs started, black illegitimacy skyrocketed. To suggest that because people were worried about a 1 in 5 illegitimacy rate that we should ignore a 40-45 year tripling of the rate to 2 in 3 as being just “more of the same” is asinine.
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:17 pm
a) Bottom line: Taxpayers are now on the hook for a record $59.1 trillion in liabilities, a 2.3% increase from 2006 (only as of 2007).
b) Since the War on Poverty began, Detroit proper has been a complete mess in good times and bad even during periods when the suburbs were booming.
c) The market did not cause the Great Depression. Progressives refuse to understand that the Fed, a government entity, creates money out of thin air diluting the existing money and is always the cause of booms, like the stock market boom of the late 1920s and the recent housing boom. Such booms must always collapse so that investments based upon sound money can return.
Antiwar historian Thomas Woods (author of the new essential book “Meltdown”) has written how the government DID NOTHING to cure the 1921 depression which initially was steeper than the 1929 depression. Federal spending declined from $6.3 billion in 1920 to $5 billion in 1921 and $3.3 billion in 1922. Tax rates, meanwhile, were slashed—for every income group. Within a year, the economy was booming again.
There is also an excellent video of Woods on the same topic.
Progressives ignore another great new book, “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal” by Robert P. Murphy which emphatically demonstrates that anti-market policies of both HOOVER and FDR dragged out a Fed induced depression of 1929 into the Great Depression.
FDR didn’t cure the depression or help promote a return to prosperity. Robert Higgs has demonstrated that FDR extended the depression and that WWII did not end it. Prosperity only returned when FDR died and Congress cut spending by 2/3.
However, I understand that the usual reaction of progressives to definitive arguments of Austrian School economists and libertarian scholars is to stick their fingers in their ears and loudly chant “I CAN’T HEAR YOU! I CAN’T HEAR YOU”!.
June 3rd, 2009 at 2:48 am
Excellent graph. I absorbed the meaning in few seconds.
1) Until the 1960’s, we were a country that accepted that close to a quarter of our population would reside in poverty.
2) The Kennedy/Johnson war on poverty in the 1960’s was extremely successful.
3) In the 1970’s Nixon, Ford, and Carter were able to hold the line in trouble times.
4) Reagan’s election in 1980 is devastating for the poor and twenty years of progress is quickly reversed.
5) Clinton gets us back on track only to undone by Bush II
6) The future is uncertain.
I would also add that the X-axis was a brilliant touch. I noted that immediately. The United States of America, the greatest and richest nation on earth, has never been able to reduce its poverty levels to less than 11% of its population.
We were close, but Reagan, the worst president in our Nation’s history, changed everything. Everything.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:07 am
Glaivester:
A couple of points. 1. without dis-aggregating 60 to 80 so that we can see 60-70 and 70-80, and further aggregate so that we can see what happened 64-73, there’s no way to tell whether there’s any link to the Great Society. My guess would be that the economic collapse of the cities in the 1970s and 80s had more to do with any increase in people not getting married than the Great Society. 2. given the enormous strides made by African-Americans since the 1960s, the increase of the middle class, the increase in numbers going to college, etc. illegitimacy doesn’t seem to have as much of a disabling impact as people assume it does.
Rob:
Here’s my reaction to the Austrian economists – hogwash. Their entire argument is based on lies and distortions.
Here are the facts – when FDR took office in 1933, unemployment was at 23%; by 1937 it was down to 9.2 percent. There was a brief spike upwards when FDR followed Austrian School policy by balancing the budget and cutting social spending – but the economy recovered inside of two years, and unemployment was back to 9.5% in 1940. By 1941, a year ahead of U.S entry into the war, unemployment was down to 6%. (Darby, Michael R. “Three-and-a-Half Million U.S. Employees Have Been Mislaid: Or, an Explanation of Unemployment, 1934-1941,” The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 84, No. 1, (Feb., 1976)
From 1933-1937, GDP grew by an average of 9.6% yearly – and if you exclude 1933 given that FDR took office part way through and his spending measures didn’t kick in until the end of the year, GDP growth averaged 13% per year. (see http://www.bea.gov/national/xls/gdpchg.xls)
So let’s recap – unemployment dropped from ‘33-’37, rose from ‘37-’38, dropped from ‘38-’41; GDP grew from ‘33-’37, dipped in ‘38, grew from ‘39-41. And what happened in those years? FDR’s New Deal programs went full blast from 33-37, in 37 he put the breaks on spending and tried to balance the budget, and then they grew when he turned around and deficit spent from 38-onwards. If the Austrian economists were right, the opposite should have happened – we should have seen unemployment increase and growth drop when the New Deal was going strong, and economic recovery in 1938. History is simply on your side on this.
As for the war, unemployment was at 6% in 1941, 3.1% in 42, 1.8% in 1943, 1.2% in 1944, and 1.9% in 1945. That’s the lowest it’s ever been in our history. (see Darby, ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat1.txt) GDP growth averaged 17.5% per year – also the best it’s ever been in our history. If that’s not prosperity, nothing is.
PS – boom and bust existed well before the Fed – want to talk about the Great Depression of 1893?
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:39 am
StevenAttewell
Thanks. I was going to attempt a similar argument but I couldn’t summon the strength. It gets so tedious. It is easier to make inroads with the flat-earth people.
I will continue to ask to until the day I die, why can’t emulate the economic model of the period between 1942 and 1945. The only answer I can come up with is that unemployment rates below 2% indicate the Free Market is being prevented from systematically destroying labor, and this is unacceptable.
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:13 am
It is pitiful that even after using some shabby chartmanship you still cant torture that graph into saying what you want it to say. How on God’s earth is showing that poverty fell at pretty much the same rate post the ‘war on poverty’ as it had prior prove that the ‘war on poverty’ was a success? Spending massively more and achieving the same results would not be considered a great deal by most people.
June 3rd, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Look again, IPH.
1959-1964 – poverty falls from 22% to 19%(3%)
1964-1969 – poverty falls from 19% to 12% (7%)
That’s basically doubling the rate of decline, and only spending about a half billion to it. People forget that the
War on Poverty wasn’t actually spending “massively” more money – LBJ deliberately kept the appropriations low as part of a deal with budget hawks to keep the federal budget under $100 billion.