In a wide-ranging article, the Wall Street Journal profiles America's ongoing "wars on poverty" over the decades, and details what the future might hold for anti-poverty programs. The "Great Society" efforts of the past seem to be over.
"Despite decades of economic growth and technological progress, tens of millions of Americans still live in poverty. Efforts to reduce the ranks of the poor persist, but they have moved underground. Today's War on Poverty isn't marked by lofty presidential rhetoric. It is a guerrilla war with platoons of idealistic crusaders and skeptical scholars, with dozens of small-scale experiments and local initiatives that largely escape public notice."
"Yet to a surprising degree, an intense subterranean debate over what causes poverty and what to do about it continues, and it has echoes of a debate that has hardly changed for a century."
[Editor's note: Although this article is only available to WSJ subscribers, it is available to Planetizen readers for free through the link below for a period of seven days.]
Read the full story: In Poverty Tactics, An Old Debate: Who Is at Fault?
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