TheAgitator.com
The Great Society: Not So Great
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008Matt Yglesias offers a hand-wavy argument for the success of the Great Society:
As with any ambitious series of new policy initiatives, some of the things done in the Kennedy-Johnson years didn’t work out well, but the results shown here speak volumes. When Ronald Reagan proclaimed “we declared war on poverty and poverty won” he was dead wrong — poverty still existed, but the number of impoverished Americans had declined precipitously. Then, under 12 years of conservative rule, the number went way up! In percentage terms, we haven’t moved as far back in the wrong direction, but we still haven’t managed to climb all the way back to where we were.
The obvious point here is that we should be wary of the post hoc fallacy. Lots of things happened over the last half-century, and to attribute short-term changes in poverty rates to specific public policies isn’t terribly realistic.
But even setting that point aside, that data isn’t even consistent with the story Matt’s trying to tell:
The key things to remember here are the LBJ launched the Great Society in 1964, and Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in 1981. Policies tend to take a year or two to go into effect, so the earliest changes we could plausibly credit to LBJ and Reagan are those that occurred after 1965 and 1982, respectively.
So what I see in this data is a period of steadily falling policy that began long before the Great Society. Unfortunately, we don’t have comparable pre-1959 data, so we can’t see how things looked during the 1950s, but my understanding is that the poverty rate had been falling steadily for decades before the Great Society was inaugurated. But in any event, something was already causing poverty to fall before LBJ announced his Great Society, and the best we can say is that his programs may have slightly accelerated the process.
But the thing about this graph that really undermines Matt’s story is the 1980s. The poverty rate hit bottom in 1978, increased sharply between 1979 and 1982, and then declined steadily, if slowly, from 1983 to 1989. If we’re going to be assigning blame based on eyeballing graphs (and again, I’m skeptical), surely the blame for this particular spike goes to the Carter administration, not “12 years of conservative rule.” The poverty rate in 1982, the first year we can attribute to Reagan policies, was virtually identical to the poverty rate in 1993, the last year we can attribute to Bush.
Looking at the changes over the last 15 years, a more plausible theory suggests itself: poverty declines during economic booms and increases during recessions. This theory perfectly fits the data. The biggest poverty declines were in 1961-69, 1983-89, and 1993-2000, the periods of strongest economic growth. The increases were in 1979-82, 1989-93, and 2000-04, all periods of recession. It seems that poverty falls when the economy is growing, and rises during recessions. Amazing!
A final point to keep in mind is that the poverty rate isn’t necessarily the best measure of our anti-poverty programs. For example, we have seen significant and rising rates of Latino immigration over the last half-century. Latinos are disproportionately poor. Hence, part of the explanation for the stagnation of poverty rates after 1970 may simply be that new poor people entering the country replaced others that had been lifted out of poverty. If this is true, then our stagnant poverty rate isn’t a problem to be solved, but simply a statistical artifact of America’s relatively liberal immigration policies.
Hmm so poverty goes up during a recession and down during economic growth? My mind was just blown…
“…the post hoc fallacy.”
This is why I reach for a flyswatter every time I hear some asshole attributing the Nineties to The Lying Bastard Of The Ozark Long March.
Given the explosion of digital technology, it would have required an authentic Stalin to keep productivity down.
Right. And overall population has boomed since the 1950′s so the numbers in poverty as a % of total population should show a steady decline.
The sharpest decline, strangely enough, follows welfare reform. Imagine that!
And overall population has boomed since the 1950’s so the numbers in poverty as a % of total population should show a steady decline.
Wouldn’t that only be true if people above the poverty line were having kids at a higher rate than those living in poverty? My inclination is that poor people, on the whole, have more children than wealthy people (can’t find any data to back up or refute this inclination; can anybody confirm/deny this?). Assuming that people living in poverty give birth to children living in poverty (which I would think is a pretty safe assumption), I would expect the percentage of the population living in poverty to rise with time while maintaining the status quo.
I hate discussing poverty. Here’s why:
1. The poverty line itself is bullshit. It’s a nationalized number. A very high concentration of the impoverished live in an area where the cost of living is really low. But since it’s a national number, poor southerners cross over to become “impoverished” because milk is $4/gallon in New York.
2. We will never just declare a “poverty floor” at, say, 10% in the same way we used to assume that we could never get unemployment below 5%. But if you really think about it, having 90% of the population above that (arbitrary) mark is fucking amazing given that people have the freedom to make as much or as little money as they choose. And, when given the choice, some percentage of the population will always choose low income over other inconveniences (long and/or non-normal hours, redefining their family unit, etc.)
Right, and to take the point even further, keep in mind that such a move is one that makes these immigrants better off. So we should make some sort of attemtp to account for this in the data.
Overall, typical pap from Yglesias.
Not just that, but poverty itself is relative. What we call poverty in America is not poverty based on the bigger, global picture. It’s just that simple. The average homeless person in America enjoys a more peaceful, protected existence with access to basic food and healthcare from charity than most people in sub-Saharan Africa.
Not just that, but poverty itself is relative. What we call poverty in America is not poverty based on the bigger, global picture. It’s just that simple. The average homeless person in America enjoys a more peaceful, protected existence with access to basic food and healthcare from charity than most people in sub-Saharan Africa.
I dunno–the fact that poor people in the most powerful and (more or less) prosperous country in the world fare better than those from the most war-torn and corrupt nations isn’t really all that flattering. It’s good to keep our relative prosperity in mind, of course, but the challenges your average African faces are far, far more severe than what most Americans will ever encounter. Which is basically to say, it’s reasonable for Americans to set the bar higher when dealing w/ poverty.