Why America Lost the War on Poverty--And How to Win It

Notes

notes Abbreviations EWP U.S. Senate, Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Subcommittee on Employment, Manpower and Poverty, Examination of the War on Poverty, 90th Cong., 1st sess., May 10 and 11, 1967 HLS, 1972 U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Handbook of Labor Statistics, 1972 (Washington: Government Printing O≈ce, 1972) HLS, 1980 U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Handbook of Labor Statistics, 1980 (Washington: Government Printing O≈ce, 1980) HLS, 1983 U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Handbook of Labor Statistics, 1983 (Washington: Government Printing O≈ce, 1983) HS U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, pt. 1 (Washington: Government Printing O≈ce, 1975) HT Executive O≈ce of the President of the United States, O≈ce of Management and Budget, Historical Tables: Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 1997 (Washington: Government Printing O≈ce, 1996) Jacobs, Handbook Eva E. Jacobs, ed., Handbook of U.S. Labor Statistics: Employment , Earnings, Prices, Productivity and Other Labor Data, 3rd ed. (Lanham, Md.: Bernan Press, 1999) NF U.S. Department of Labor, O≈ce of Policy Planning and Research , The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (1965), reprinted in Lee Rainwater and William L. Yancey, The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1967), 41–124; all citations are to the Rainwater and Yancey reprint 252 / notes to pages 1–10 Pechman interview Walter Heller, Kermit Gordon, James Tobin, Gardner Ackley, and Paul Samuelson, recorded interview by Joseph Pechman, August 1, 1964, Oral History Program, John F. Kennedy Library , Boston Poverty, 1998 U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, series P60-207, Poverty in the United States, 1998 (Washington: Government Printing O≈ce, 1999) SA, 1981 U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1981 (Washington: Government Printing O≈ce, 1981) SA, 1992 U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1992 (Washington: Government Printing O≈ce, 1992) Unemployment Hearings, pt. 4 U.S. Senate, Unemployment Problems, Hearings before the Special Committee on Unemployment Problems, 86th Cong., 1st sess., pt. 4, November 19 and 20 and December 17, 1959 Unemployment Hearings, pt. 7 U.S. Senate, Unemployment Problems, Hearings before the Special Committee on Unemployment Problems, 86th Cong., 1st sess., pt. 7, December 1, 2, 3, and 4, 1959 Introduction 1. Seth Rockman, Welfare Reform in the Early Republic: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: St. Martin’s, 2003), 1–20, 148–53. 2. There is more discussion of poverty lines throughout this book. Chapter 2 discusses their origins, and chapters 7 and 11 argue that they are too low. 3. Economic Policy Institute, Job Watch Bulletin, May 6, 2005, at [www.epinet.org]. 4. Aaron Donovan, ‘‘For Many, Sliding into Poverty Takes Only a Few Missed Paychecks,’’ New York Times, November 16, 2001, A30; Peter G. Gosselin, ‘‘How Just a Handful of Setbacks Sent the Ryans Tumbling out of Prosperity,’’ Los Angeles Times, December 30, 2004, A1, A18–A19. Chapter One 1. Lawrence S. Wittner, Cold War America: From Hiroshima to Watergate, expanded ed.(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978), 111–40, esp. 122; Douglas T. Miller and Marion Nowak, The Fifties: The Way We Really Were (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977), esp. 105–21. For another positive view, Alan Ehrenhalt, The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues of Community in America (New York: Basic Books, 1995). 2. James T. Patterson, America’s Struggle against Poverty, 1900–1980 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 78–96, o√ers a brief treatment of the 50s. 3. Gross domestic product data from U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, at [http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/dn/gdplev.htm]. Also, Frank notes to pages 10–12 / 253 Levy, Dollars and Dreams: The Changing American Income Distribution (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1987), 47, 56, 66. Median family size grew from 3.54 to 3.67; the increase was less than expected in a baby boom. See HS, 41. 4. HS, 130–31, 132. 5. Ibid., 173. These are pre-inflation earnings for 1950–60. Prices rose about 23%. 6. Unless otherwise stated, in this book poverty rates are based on the federal government ’s o≈cial poverty lines. There...