Tag Archives: Lyndon Johnson

Fifty years on from the Great Society program, what has been achieved – and what hasn’t – in government efforts to reduce poverty.

Half a century ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared a “War on Poverty.” That war would soon make a real difference. In the decade following its 1964 launch, our official poverty rate dropped from 19 to 11.2 percent.   But that progress stalled in the 1970s, and a profound economic insecurity now afflicts the vast majority of Americans, poor and middle-class alike. Our top 1 …