Legacies of the War on Poverty

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We extend the work of Haveman et al., a comprehensive analysis of the U.S. social welfare system’s evolution from the start of the War on Poverty through 2012. Their work chronicled changes in the welfare system and in poverty measurement and analyzed poverty levels and trends. We extend the analysis through 2022, finding that the poverty rate declined from 2012 to 2019 mostly because of improvements in the economy and not from changes in the transfer system; in the 2019 to 2022 pandemic period, though, the opposite occurred, as changes in poverty rates were mostly driven by changes in government relief programs. The decline in poverty from 2012 to 2022 followed a run-up in poverty from 2000 to 2012, leaving the nation with no improvement in poverty rates from the economy since 2000. We conclude that significant future reductions in poverty will likely require further improvements in the safety net.