The War on Poverty turns 50 next January. Sadly, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said recently of the anti-poverty effort, “We don’t have much to show for it.” The truth is very different. Programs such as SNAP, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Medicaid, college financial assistance, and Medicare, have reduced poverty and malnutrition, expanded access to health care, and opened doors of opportunity for millions. Take SNAP, which Chairman Ryan’s budget would cut by $135 billion over the next 10 years. Yet, the program is a prime example of a major national accomplishment. Before food stamps were widely available, large numbers of children in very poor areas of America showed signs of malnutrition. That’s no longer the case. And a recent academic study looked at the babies who first benefited from food stamps in the 1960s and 1970s and found that they grew up to be healthier and more likely to finish high school than their peers born in counties where the program had not yet been instituted.
Analysts from a variety of political perspectives who use the government’s new Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM, which includes both cash assistance and “non-cash” benefits such as SNAP, the EITC, and rental assistance) when studying poverty, find that without the safety net, the percentage of Americans in poverty would be nearly double what it is: 29% of Americans would have been poor in 2011, rather than the 16% who were poor when safety net programs are taken into account. SNAP alone kept 4.7 million abovethe poverty line.
Source: Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 7/15/13, War on Poverty
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