Immigration and Poverty Reduction: Policy Making on a Squirrel Wheel

The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 (EOA), which launched the War on Poverty in the United States, was more than a major accomplishment of the Great Society's political agenda.It marked the beginning of "a new approach to poverty" (Levitan 1969).Until that time, the nation's efforts to combat poverty had focused almost exclusively on relief measures.With the passage of the EOA, a new tactic was undertaken: prevention.As President Lyndon Johnson declared upon signing this legislation, " O t ~r American answer to poverty is not to make the poor more secure in their poverty but to reach down and help lift themselves out of the ruts of poverty" (10).The causes of poverty in the United States were to be identified and then specific policies enacted to eliminate them.Attention was disproportionately given to measures to eradicate youth poverty, which was identified as the weakest link in the cycle whereby one generation of the poor becomes the next.If pursued vigorously, this approach-it was proclailued by the original director of the program, R. Sargent Shriver-could eliminate poverty in the United States by 1976 (69).In 1964, there were 36.4 million persons in the United States living in poverty (19.0 percent of the population).By 2001 the poverty population totaled 32.9 nlillion persons (1 1.7 percent of the population).Thus, while the percentage of the poverty population has declined over the preceding 37 years, the absolute sizc of the poverty population itself has hardly shrunk (Census Bureau 2002a, 2 1).Clearly, the poor are still very much "with us."Indeed, in 2001 the nation's poverty population grew by 1.3 million persons-the largest annual increase in a decade.The author is Professor of Labor Economics a t the New York State Scl~ool of lndustriul and Labor Relut~oi~s a t Cornell Unrversity, Ithaca, N.Y.The paper was presented a t the annual meeting of the Assoc~ation for Euolutionury Econoinics a t Washington, D.C.,