WASHINGTON: In his first State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty in America. Fifty years later some progress has been made but gaping inequality remains.
“This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America,” John told Congress on January 8, 1964, two months after he succeeded the assassinated John F Kennedy. “We shall not rest until that war is won,” he declared.
The US poverty rate has dropped from 26 percent in 1964 to 16 percent today, thanks in particular to a variety of food aid programmes and tax credits, says the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. But poverty in the world’s largest economy is far from being eradicated.
In 2012 it affected some 47 million Americans, including 13 million children, which James Ziliak, director of the Centre for Poverty Research at the University of Kentucky, dubs “a very high number”.
Some battles have been won, such as that targeting extreme malnutrition, or have have seen partial wins, such as the programme providing health insurance for the poor and the aged, he said. “If we did not have any safety net programs, the rate would be doubled,” he said. By any measure, poverty has gone down significantly among the elderly, which was one of Johnson’s priorities.
Poverty among children has also declined since Johnson made his famous call to arms. But one in five kids in America still lives in poverty and more than one in five children in New York, for example, lives in a family that does not have enough to eat, the Coalition against Hunger says.
A total of 25 major cities also reported that requests for food assistance or the number of homeless had gone up in the past year, illustrating the slow pace of progress in the war on poverty.
As for the gap between rich and poor, it is progressing at a “dangerous” pace, in the words of President Barack Obama, who said last year that the richest 10 percent of no longer take in a third of all revenue but rather half. AFP
