Uneven gains for states after 50 years of the War on Poverty, By Jake Grovum, January 30, 2014, Stateline: “The War on Poverty has alleviated some of the economic despair that existed when President Lyndon Johnson declared ‘all-out war on human poverty and unemployment in these United States’ in January 1964. But many of the states that were among the poorest decades ago remain so today, even as safety-net programs have benefited millions of Americans. The average poverty rate among the states was 24 percent in 1959. But some were in much worse shape than others: Mississippi’s rate, for example, was 54.5 percent then. The rate in Arkansas was 47.5 percent, and in South Carolina it was 45.4 percent. Fifteen states had official poverty rates of 30 percent or higher, according to the 1960 U.S. Census. That year the official federal poverty level was an annual household income of $2,973 for a family of four, or $23,800 in today’s dollars…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty