Poverty in 2021 looks different than in 1964 – but the US hasn't changed how it measures who's poor since LBJ began his war
- Written by Mark Robert Rank, Professor of Social Welfare, Washington University in St Louis
Poverty in America has changed since the 1960s.Morton Broffman/Getty ImagesIn 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson famously declared war on poverty.
“The richest nation on Earth can afford to win it,” he told Congress in his first State of the Union address. “We cannot afford to lose it.”
Yet as the administration was to learn...
