Posted 09/16/2014 05:50 PM ET
Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/091614-717643-johnson-war-on-poverty-still-hasnt-been-won.htm#ixzz3E5mkcicQ
The Census Bureau's annual report on poverty, released Tuesday, is noteworthy because this year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson's launch of the War on Poverty.
Liberals claim that the war has failed because we didn't spend enough money. Their answer is to spend more. But the facts show otherwise.
Since its beginning, U.S. taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson's War on Poverty (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusting for inflation, that's three times more than was spent on all military wars since the American Revolution.
The federal government currently runs more than 80 means-tested welfare programs. These programs provide cash, food, housing and medical care to low-income Americans. Federal and state spending on these programs last year was $943 billion.
(These figures do not include Social Security, Medicare or unemployment insurance.)
Over 100 million people, about a third of the U.S. population, received aid from at least one welfare program at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient in 2013. If converted to cash, current means-tested spending is five times the amount needed to eliminate all poverty in the U.S.
But the Census will almost certainly proclaim that around 14% of Americans are still poor. The present poverty rate is almost exactly the same as it was in 1967, a few years after the War on Poverty started. Census data actually show that poverty has gotten worse over the last 40 years.
How is this possible? How can the taxpayers spend $22 trillion on welfare while poverty gets worse? The answer is that it isn't possible. Census counts a family as poor if its income falls below specified thresholds. But in counting family "income," Census ignores nearly the entire $943 billion welfare state.
For most Americans, the word "poverty" means significant material deprivation, an inability to provide a family with adequate nutritious food, reasonable shelter and clothing. But only a small portion of the more than 40 million people labeled as poor by Census fit that description.
The media frequently associate the idea of poverty with being homeless. But less than 2% of the poor are homeless. Only one in 10 live in mobile homes. The typical house or apartment of the poor is in good repair, uncrowded and actually larger than the average dwelling of non-poor French, Germans or English.
According to government surveys, the typical family that Census identifies as poor has air-conditioning, cable or satellite TV, and a computer. Forty percent have a wide-screen HDTV, and another 40% have Internet access. Three quarters of the poor own a car and roughly a third have two or more cars.
These numbers are not the result of the current bad economy pushing middle-class families into poverty; instead, they reflect a steady improvement in living conditions among the poor for many decades.
The intake of protein, vitamins and minerals by poor children is virtually identical with upper-middle-class kids. According to surveys by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the overwhelming majority of poor people report that they were not hungry even for a single day during the prior year.
We can be grateful that the living standards of all Americans, including the poor, have risen in the past half-century. But the War on Poverty has not succeeded according to LBJ's original goal.
Johnson's aim was not to prop up living standards by making more and more people dependent on an ever-larger welfare state. Instead, he sought to increase self-sufficiency, the ability of a family to support itself out of poverty without dependence on welfare aid.
Johnson asserted that the War on Poverty would actually shrink the welfare rolls and transform the poor from "tax-eaters" into "taxpayers." Judged by that standard, the War on Poverty has been a colossal flop. The welfare state has undermined self-sufficiency by discouraging work and penalizing marriage.
When the War on Poverty began, 7% of children were born outside marriage; today, 42% are. By eroding marriage, the welfare state has made many Americans less capable of self-support than when the War on Poverty began.
President Obama plans to spend $13 trillion on means-tested welfare over the next decade. Most of this spending will flow through traditional welfare programs that discourage the keys to self-sufficiency: work and marriage.
Rather than doubling down on the mistakes of the past, we should restructure the welfare state around Johnson's original goal: increasing Americans' capacity for self-support.
Welfare should no longer be a one-way handout. Able-bodied recipients of cash, food and housing should be required to work or prepare for work as condition of receiving aid. Welfare's penalties against marriage should be reduced.
By returning to the original vision of aiding the poor to aid themselves, we can begin, in Johnson's words, to "replace their despair with opportunity."
• Rector is a Heritage Foundation senior research fellow and an authority on poverty, the welfare system and immigration. This article first appeared in The Daily Signal.
Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/091614-717643-johnson-war-on-poverty-still-hasnt-been-won.htm#ixzz3E5lwnrPO
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