How the War on Poverty Succeeded (in Four Charts)

The War on Poverty “has failed,” Paul Ryan said last week, at an event held to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 State of the Union address, where the new President coined the famous phrase. Significantly, Ryan did not feel the need to justify his claim, which is regarded as an article of faith in conservative circles and even among some progressives. We “keep dumping money into programs we know don’t work,” Ryan lamented.

By now, the figures on which these claims are based should be well known. As Ryan pointed out during last year’s election campaign, there are close to fifty million people living in poverty, according to the standard government measure—nearly one in six Americans. In 1964, the poverty rate was about about nineteen per cent. By 1966, it had fallen to just under fifteen per cent. Almost half a century later, in 2012—the last year for which the Census Bureau has provided an official estimate—the poverty rate is still fifteen per cent. Doesn’t this suggest Ryan is right, and the War on Poverty has been a monumental failure?

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