PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

Fifty Years Later: From a War on Povertyto a War on the Poor

Anna Maria Santiago

Case Western Reserve University

There is no blight on American life so great as the enduring poverty in our great cities and ofthe still unseen poor in the rural and mountain regions. And, of course, in the larger world.

John K. Galbraith, The Affluent Society ([1958] 1998:xii)

It was images of poor families taken in rural Appalachia by photographers Billy Barnes, JohnDominis, and Andrew Stern, coupled with the writings of The New York Times journalist HomerBigart and seminal books by scholars Michael Harrington (The Other America [1962]) and JohnGalbraith (The Affluent Society [{1958}1998]) that brought poverty to light as a major social problemfacing a relatively affluent America of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Concerned with expandingopportunities and increasing income for the 37 million Americans living in poverty at the time,President Lyndon B. Johnson declared an unconditional war on poverty on January 8, 1964, initiatinga new era of direct federal involvement in schools, hospitals, labor markets, and neighborhoods(quoted in Bailey and Danziger 2013:1-3). The overarching goals of the War on Poverty were to: sus-tain high levels of employment; accelerate national and regional economic growth; improve labormarkets; regenerate urban and rural communities; expand educational and training opportunities foryouth as well as adults; advance the nations health; and expand support to the elderly and disabled(Bailey and Danziger 2013:7). To address these goals, Johnson worked with Congress to pass morethan 200 pieces of legislation, resulting in the largest expansion of social safety net programs in U.S.history. This legislation created the Medicaid and Medicare programs providing health care to low-income people and the elderly; expanded the Head Start early education program; increased fundingfor K-12 and postsecondary education; established Food Stamps (currently known as SNAP) andother school and community-based nutrition programs; instituted job training programs such as Job

I would like to thank Sheldon Danziger and George Galster and the editors of Social Problems for their comments on earlier versionsof this article. An earlier multimedia version of this address was presented on August 16, 2014 at the 64th Annual Meetings of theSociety for the Study of Social Problems. This version may be accessed at http://socpro.oxfordjournals.org/. I wish to thank all ofthe photographers who agreed to share their images of poverty in this multimedia presentation. Direct correspondence to: AnnaMaria Santiago, Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, 11235Bellflower Road, Cleveland, OH, 44106. E-mail: ams333@case.edu.

VC The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of Social Problems.For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

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Social Problems, 2015, 62, 214doi: 10.1093/socpro/spu009Presidential Address

Corps and VISTA; and augmented subsidized housing units through the Section 202 and 236 pro-grams for the elderly and low-income families (Galster 2007).

When the War on Poverty began, I was a second grader attending elementary school in one of thepoorest neighborhoods in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Like many generations of immigrant families thatpopulated the neighborhood, my family was among the ranks of the working poor. Unbeknownst tome at the time, programs supporting reduced-price school lunches, summer jobs for teens, and finan-cial support to attend collegeall implemented as part of Johnsons Great Society legislationexpanded the educational, cultural, and recreational opportunities and resources available to familieslike mine and mitigated the effects of living in poverty. The far-reaching benefits of these initiativeshave often been lost in current poverty discussions.

As numerous scholars, policy makers, and journalists have noted during this fiftieth anniversaryyear, the War on Poverty produced mixed results (see, for example, Bailey and Danziger 2013; Kilty2014). Among the most well-documented successes were the rapid decline in elderly poverty and theextension of universal health-care coverage to the elderly; the long-term gains in educational attain-ment, employment, and earnings, as well as lower rates of teen pregnancy and crime associated withearly childhood education; and the desegregation of institutions and organizations receiving federalfunding (see Bailey and Danziger 2013; Council of Economic Advisers 2014). Yet, five decades laterwe have ample evidence that the war is far from over. Critics (see NPR 2012; Ryan 2014; Tanner2012) from all sides of the political spectrum have argued, like President Ronald Reagan famouslyasserted in 1988, that poverty won with nearly 45 million Americansapproximately 14.5 percentof the populationliving in poverty today (U.S. Census Bureau 2013). They also have argued, mostnotably Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), that the War on Poverty policies and programs cre-ated a welfare hammocka culture of dependency that has served to sustain current levels of poverty(Ryan 2014). The counter argument, however, is that poverty rates today would be significantlyhigher had we not had the safety net in place at all (Council of Economic Advisers 2014; Meyer andSullivan 2012; Moffitt 2013; Sherman 2013). Instead of being sustained by too generous welfare ben-efits, rising poverty rates in the United States have been fueled by skill-biased technological changes;the globalization of economic and labor markets; declines in unionization; continued erosion of theU.S. minimum wage; declining progressivity of the federal income tax; and the explosion of executivepay and the size of the financial sector (Bailey and Danziger 2013; Danziger 2014).

Since 1964, who constitutes the ranks of the poor has been changing as well. Today, poor peopleare increasingly Latino, foreign born (Card and Raphael 2013), and comprised of single parents rais-ing children (Bailey and Danziger 2013; Massey 2014). While the number of elderly poor continuesto decline (see Figure 1), the poverty rate for working-age adults has been increasing sharply, due inlarge measure to changes in global, national, and regional economies and labor markets. Thesechanges include the replacement of high-wage manufacturing jobs with low-wage service sector jobs;the loss of jobs to automation and computerization; corporate downsizing and outsourcing to othercountries; and increases in temporary and part-time jobsall of which have added former middle-class workers to the ranks of the poor (Bailey and Danziger 2013; Gans 1995). In the aftermath ofthe Great Recession, the new poor encompass the college educated, suburbanites, and homeowners.Today, more than half of Americans have someone in their immediate or extended families who ispoor (Halpin and Agne 2014:2).

Just as disconcerting is the rise in child poverty, as rates today have climbed to levels seen 30 yearsago (refer to Figure 2). Today, nearly one in four children (23 percent) in the United States lives inpoverty. There are considerable racial and ethnic differences in childrens exposure to poverty: 13percent of all Anglo and Asian children are poor as compared to 34 percent of Latino children and39 percent of African American children (see Murphey and Redd 2014). Further, Latino and AfricanAmerican children are twice as likely (65 and 62 percent, respectively) to grow up in low-incomehouseholds than their Anglo and Asian peers (30 and 32 percent, respectively). Trends in the growthof minority populations in the United States, resulting from higher fertility and immigration rates,

Presidential Address: From a War on Poverty to a War on the Poor 3

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Figure 1. Poverty Rates by Age, 1959 to 2013

Note: The data points are placed at the midpoints of the respective years. Data for people aged 18 to 64 and older are not available from 1960 to 1965.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau 19602014

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Notes: Estimates relfect the new OMB race denitions, and include only those who are identied with a single race. Hispanics may be of any race.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau 2014

4 Santiago

especially for Latinos, underscore the importance of younger Latinos and African Americans to thecurrent and long-term economic health of the nation (see Toossi 2012). With nearly four in tenAfrican American and one in three Latino children growing up in economically disadvantaged house-holds and the corresponding constraints this places on healthy child development, we are jeopardiz-ing not only their short- and long-term well-being but the future preparedness of our workforce andour overall national well-being.

The Great Recession has produced a global crisis for children, which threatens global health andwell-being as well. The 2014 UNICEF Innocenti Report Card 12 for the 41 most affluent countries ofthe world notes that in the period between 2008 and 2013, child poverty rates increased in 23nations, resulting in a net increase of 2.6 million children falling into poverty and swelling the ranksof poor children to 76.5 million in these richest countries in the world. When compared to childrenliving in these other affluent countries of the world, children in the United States fare poorly (seeFigure 3). According to data compiled by UNICEF (2013), the United States has the second highest

PortugalCanadaPoland

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Figure 3. Relative Child Poverty Rates in the Worlds Richest Countries, May 2013

Notes: The top tercile represents the best performers, the middle tercile, intermediate performers, and the bottom tercile, the worst perform-ing group. Countries are ordered according to their ranking in the whole component (z-score).

Source: UNICEF 2013

Presidential Address: From a War on Poverty to a War on the Poor 5

child poverty rate among the worlds most affluent countries. Further, the United States falls near thebottom on almost all of the other indicators of material well-being, education, and health and safety.

A recent report from the Brookings Institution (Kneebone and Berube 2013) suggests that pov-erty also has become more clustered and concentrated within distressed and high poverty neighbor-hoods (defined as those with poverty rates of 40 percent or more). Nearly one in four poor residentsis living in these high poverty neighborhoods located primarily in our largest urban areas. In the pastdecade, we also have witnessed the shift from inner-city poverty to a more regional poverty (Berube,Kneebone, and Williams 2013). Since early in this new century, the majority of poor Americans nowlive in the suburbs. Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube (2013) estimate that American suburbs arehome to 16.5 million poor people, as compared to the 13.5 million who reside in inner-cityneighborhoods.

Markedly different from the beginnings of the War on Poverty are the political and social contextsshaping our current approaches to addressing poverty in America. Galbraith laments in the fortiethanniversary edition of his book, The Affluent Society ([1958] 1998), that the enduring high level ofpoverty in the United States is a blight on American life (p. xii). We might ask as Martin LutherKing Jr. did more than 45 years ago, do we currently have the political and social will to end poverty?Today, I would suggest the answer is an emphatic no. The political discourse on poverty hasreceded almost to complete silence. Poverty is rarely mentioned as both parties direct their politicalrhetoric toward middle-class America. Further, as Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), the chair of theCongressional Black Caucus, was quoted in a recent blog post by Jennifer Bendery (2013), theCongressional record on poverty is missing in action. Indeed, in his recently released second edi-tion of The Underserving Poor (2103:xi), Michael Katz contends it is precisely because of this lack ofpolitical will that poverty has become a politically toxic issue in twenty-first-century America, reced-ing back into relative obscurity.

Instead, we have moved from waging an unconditional war on poverty to an unconditional war onthe poor. Since the 1970s, there has been a consistent bipartisan gnawing away at anti-poverty pro-grams that has decimated the social safety net for millions of poor American families (Friedman2010). Today, this safety net is being further shredded by a struggling economy and labor market;the inability of existing institutions to meet the increasing demand for social services; and politicalgamesmanship targeting anti-poverty programs and scapegoating the poor (Stanford Center onPoverty and Inequality 2014). All too often we hear familiar rhetoric distinguishing between thedeserving versus the undeserving poor, emphasizing individual behavioral deficits and personal failureover global changes in our economy and the failure of our social institutions as the primary reasonsfor the persistence of poverty today.

Despite rhetoric that suggests that we dont yet know how to eradicate poverty, a growing numberof scholars, practitioners, policy analysts, and the poor themselves contend that this is a myth. As DavidGrusky (2014) convincingly argues, we already know what causes povertya poorly performing econ-omy (e.g., not enough jobs, poorly paying jobs) and a poorly performing labor market (e.g.,underproduction of skill). If we believe that these are the causes, then viable remedies include repairingthe economy and the labor market through programs that foster job creation and workforce develop-ment and social entrepreneurship. It means developing policies such as the Earned Income Tax Credit(EITC), increasing the minimum wage, supporting subsidized jobs of last resort for those disconnectedfrom work and welfare as mechanisms to lift people out of poverty (Danziger 2014). Unfortunately, weare currently living in a political and social milieu that, in the aggregate, lacks the political will to supportthese types of social action despite evidence that suggests these initiatives work.

How did we get to this impasse? How did we shift from a war on poverty to a war on the poor? In thisarticle, I examine how the ideology of undeservingness became a primary weapon in promoting thiswar and producing the current political bottleneck. I examine the deleterious consequences that thiswar on the poor has had for our children and for our nations future. And, I conclude with a brief dis-cussion of the ways in which poor people and their allies are fighting back, including the development

6 Santiago

of innovative counterstrategies aimed at circumventing this bottleneck in the quest to alleviatepoverty.

HOW DID THE WAR ON POVERTY BECOME A WAR ON THE POOR?As Herbert Gans notes in his book, The War on the Poor (1995), the United States has been wagingwar against poor people for much of its history. While this war has used a variety of weapons, all areaimed at withholding opportunities for the poor to acquire decent jobs, schools, housing, and thenecessities required for a modest version of the American way of life. (p. 1). The weapons of choiceinclude decreasing and threatening to eliminate welfare benefits to poor mothers unable to work orfind jobs; increasing the punitive conditions under which assistance is provided; and stirring up con-tempt of the poor among those who are more fortunate (Gans 1995:1). Additional weapons includeburgeoning incarceration rates and zero tolerance policies toward the poor, particularly poor peopleof color.

During the past 30 years, these tactics have escalated with the increased visibility of the poor andthe problems that have been attributed to them. Foreshadowing the Great Recession, Gans (1995)suggests, however, the war against the poor could spread to members of these (more fortunate)classes in the future. As more well-paying and secure jobs disappear from the American economy,many Americans will not find new ones, until an ever larger number of such workers or their children,slide slowly but surely into poverty themselves (p. 1; italics added for emphasis).

A significant part of the ongoing war against the poor is a war of pejorative words or labels generatedby journalists and social scientists, which, in turn, have been used to stereotype, stigmatize, and con-demn large segments of the poor as undeserving (Gans 1995). As Max Rose and Frank Baumgartner(2013) note: Media discussion of poverty has shifted from arguments that focus on the structuralcauses of poverty or the social costs of having large numbers of poor to portrayals of the poor as cheat-ers and chiselers and of welfare programs doing more harm than good (p. 22). A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll (see McClam 2013) found that more than half of the respondents attributedthe persistence of poverty in America to social safety net programs that generate Paul Ryans welfarehammock (too much welfare that prevents initiative) or because of personal deficits that limit thedevelopment of a strong work ethic or disrupt family life (see Figure 4). Although an increasing numberof respondents recognized the role that structural factors might play in perpetuating poverty, individual

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Figure 4. Reasons for the Continuing Problem of Poverty, June 2013

Notes: Estimates reect the new OMB race denitions, and include only those who are identied with a single race. Hispanics may be of anyrace.

Source: McClam 2013

Presidential Address: From a War on Poverty to a War on the Poor 7

responsibility remained paramount, particularly among men and white respondents. In a follow-upNBC News/Wall Street Journal poll administered in 2014 (see Wessler 2014), attitudes toward thecause of poverty continued to shift: while 44 percent of respondents felt that poverty was a result ofpeople not doing enough, almost the same percentage of respondents (46 percent) argued that fallinginto poverty was associated with circumstances beyond their control.

Despite the shifting attitudinal landscape, a nontrivial, albeit smaller, majority of Americans con-tinue to embrace the notion of undeservingness. This ideology of undeservingness assumes that thosewho do not behave according to the rules set by mainstream America, particularly those related towork and sexual activity, are undeserving (see discussion in Gans 1995:6-7; Katz 2013:ch. 1) andblames their poverty on deficient morals, behaviors, values, and/or culture (Raz 2013). Even in themidst of the economic woes of the past six years, we continue to blame the poor not only for theirown circumstances, but for the ills of the larger American economy and society. If people werentlazy, they wouldnt be without jobs. If young women werent sexually active, they would not be hav-ing babies outside of marriage and becoming dependent on welfare. If people didnt drink or usedrugs, they would not be homeless. Ironically, many of these same behaviors labeled as inferior whenpracticed by the poor (e.g., nonmarital childbearing, substance abuse) are now considered to be partof mainstream America.

Further, as Christopher DeSante (2013) notes, who is deemed deserving or undeserving hasbecome increasingly racialized. In a thought-provoking experiment that examined the extent to whichthe value of hard work was enmeshed with perceptions of race, DeSante randomly assigned the targetcharacteristicsrace and work ethicto redacted applications for state assistance and then askedstudy participants to budget monies based on levels of deservingness. He found that even when effort(or lack thereof) was perceived as equal, whites were found to be more deserving than blacks. Hecontends that proposed sanctions against the poor were more a function of penalizing folks based onrace rather than undeservingness.

Further, Gans (1995) observes that this war of words on the poor is a war that kills poor peoplesspirit and morale and otherwise adds to the miseries resulting from a sheer lack of money (p. 1).This rhetorical battle has been waged to justify the mean-spirited treatment of the poor by those whoare more affluent (Katz 2013). I would add that it has taken away their humanity and rendered theminvisible. How often do we pretend the poor dont even exist? How easy is it for us to ignore those whom weconsider as underserving of our assistance let alone our attention?

HOW DID THE WAR ON POVERTY BECOME A WAR ON POOR CHILDREN?The War on Poverty became a war on the poor when we decided that it was and is acceptable for mil-lions of children in the United States to live in conditions of deprivation to which we would notexpose our pets let alone our own children and grandchildren. It became a war when we strippedpoor children of their self-worth, identity, and dignity by labeling them and their parents as unworthy.It became a war when we tied their health and well-being, opportunities, and life chances to the zipcode where they reside. Poor children today are growing up in communities where they see wide-spread abandonment and decay; are more likely to be exposed to environmental toxins; witness orexperience violent behavior and gang activity; are more likely to be incarcerated; have limited accessto fresh produce and healthy foods; have fewer supports and services; attend inferior schools; andhave few, if any, safe places to play (see discussion in AECF 2014). As a result, poor children, particu-larly children of color, are less likely to meet developmental milestones (Kalil 2013) and face numer-ous barriers to opportunities (Corcoran 2001; Duncan et al. 2012). Further, living in places with fewopportunities has been linked to the intergenerational perpetuation of residence in disadvantagedneighborhoods and the diminished likelihood of escaping poverty (Sharkey 2013).

Previous studies on the effects of living in neighborhoods characterized by concentrated disadvant-age (e.g., Sharkey 2013; Sharkey and Faber 2014; Wilson 1987), including our own research in

8 Santiago

Denver over the past decade (Santiago and Galster 2014; Santiago et al. 2014), document how all ofthese circumstancesespecially exposure to violencelimits childrens health and well-being andconstrains access to the institutions and resources that make prosperity possible. Children living infamilies that experience deep poverty, who are poor during early childhood, or experience long spellsof poverty during childhood, are more likely to have lower levels of academic achievement; drop outof school; have poorer employment outcomes; and experience more health, behavioral, and emo-tional problems. Growing evidence suggests that these problems persist into adulthood (Aber,Morris, and Raver 2012; Galster, Santiago, and Lucero 2014). Finally, an earlier estimate by HarryHolzer and colleagues (2008) suggests that the annual cost of childhood poverty was about $500 bil-lion (in 2007 dollars)a product of foregone earnings, increased costs of crime, and higher healthexpenditures and lower health.

Childhood poverty has deleterious consequences for the larger society as well. High childhoodpoverty rates deplete the U.S. economy through reduced productivity and output. In WhitherOpportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Childrens Life Chances (2011), Greg Duncan and RichardMurnane stress that the United States is not producing the workers we need in sufficientquantities, which (1) affects our short- and long-term ability to compete internationally; and (2)diminishes our capacity to address the needs of an aging population. Child poverty also increasesrates of crime and health-care costs (Moore et al. 2009:4-6). As Duncan and Murnane (2011) note,the United States needs to do a better job at ensuring that more poor children grow up, completecollege or an equivalent form of specialized training, and enter the workforce with competitiveskills. This will increase the nations economic output, increase consumer demand, and lessendependency (p. 3).

All of our childrenaffluent and poorare our most indispensable asset for the future (AECF2014:22). As our population continues to change, equitable opportunities for all children to partici-pate in and contribute to the nations economy are not merely a matter of social justice; rather theyare economic necessities. Our future prosperity, global competiveness, and community vitality areinextricably linked to our childrens ability to succeed. In order to secure that future, investmentsmust be made to provide all children with access to opportunities that enable them to realize theirfull potential. Such an investment in our childrens future can be pursued on moral grounds as well:Why should poor children be penalized for the actions or inaction of their parents? Moreover, given ourongoing sluggish economy, why should poor adults be penalized for the failure of our economicinstitutions?

HOW THE POOR AND THEIR ALLIES ARE TRAVERS ING THE IMPASSEPoor people and their allies are not passive observers of this war and the ongoing political impasse.Increasingly, they are fighting back to reclaim control of their lives and communities. In our currentpolitical and social milieu, I would argue as G. K. Chesterton did in the Scandal of Father Brown(reprinted in Collected Works, Vol. XIII [2006]) it isnt that our political leaders cant see the solutionto the problem of poverty. Rather, because of their single-minded focus on undeservingness andscapegoating poor people for their poverty, they just cant see the problem. While this inability orunwillingness to acknowledge the structural precursors of poverty exacerbates the politicalstalemate we are witnessing in Washington now, it also has led poor people and their allies to chal-lenge the political status quo and to develop alternative and often parallel strategies for fighting pov-erty. The occupy movement that emerged in 2011 illustrates how issues of poverty and inequalitygalvanized people worldwide to question spending priorities, promote structural change, and reclaimdignity.

For the past 20 years, I have been working with hundreds of low-income families in Denver toidentify with them what works best to promote economic security. It is fallacious to assume thatthose who are more affluent are the only ones who know how to help poor people prosper. If we

Presidential Address: From a War on Poverty to a War on the Poor 9

move beyond our shortsighted perceptions of poor people as needy and undeserving, we will uncoverdifferent narratives that reveal resourcefulness, capability, and initiative. In my field of communitypractice we recognize that residents have the capacity within themselves and their communities toenvision and accomplish their goals. While this recognition does not exempt our communal responsi-bility toward the most vulnerable members of our society, it underscores the importance of inclusiveproblem solving.

As we confront the challenges of poverty today, numerous scholars, policy makers, practitioners,and nonprofit leaders are advocating for poverty reduction strategies that focus on job creation, eco-nomic security, workforce development, social entrepreneurship, asset building, and communitydevelopment. They also promote the use of alternative funding mechanisms such as micro lending,individual development accounts, social impact bonds, and crowdfunding. Underlying these alterna-tive approaches to poverty elimination is the understanding that ordinary families in low-incomeneighborhoods have the capacity and drive to move themselves and their communities out of pov-erty. One such innovation, the Family Independence Initiative in San Francisco, has developed itsprogramming around the idea that what families most need to lift themselves out of poverty is asense of control over their daily lives, an awareness of the options available to them, and a diverseand active social network that provides support and expands those options. Instead of importingassets into a community, this initiative begins by identifying where they already exist. It also bringstogether families to support one another while they are improving their lives in their own way(Moore 2014:2; also see Miller 2011). While this approach does not negate the role of the largersociety in addressing issues of poverty, it underscores the necessity of including poor people in devel-oping the options that work best for them.

One of the lessons learned from the Great Recession is the need to connect vulnerable groups toemployment and economic activity as well as ensure that new jobs are ones that offer family-supportingwages, benefits, and opportunities for growth (AECF 2014:27). There also is an urgent need toexpand access to jobs and career pathways for poor children and their parents (Magnuson 2007;Schrock 2014). Job development in high-opportunity industries like green jobs and informationtechnology are the kinds of high quality, knowledge-based jobs that offer opportunities for economicsecurity. In the San Francisco Bay area, programs like Roots of Success and the Earned Assets ResourceNetwork (EARN) have developed training curricula to respond to these emerging jobs.

Also essential to fostering economic security is the expansion of entrepreneurship opportunities(Kerlin 2006). These may include learning the requisite technical and management skills to openones own business. Or they may entail developing employee-owned workers cooperatives such assustainable urban farming undertaken by the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland or the environ-mentally safe cleaning businesses operated by members of the Womens Action to Gain EconomicSecurity (WAGES) in San Francisco. Or these may be the establishment of social purpose businesseslike the Delancey Street Foundation that provide job readiness, skills training, and employment forsome of the most difficult to employ poor peopleformer substance abusers, ex-offenders, and thehomeless.

The long-term economic security of poor people rests on their ability to acquire wealth, startingin childhood. Recent innovations include individual development accounts for children, which areaimed at accruing savings over the course of childhood to facilitate childrens ability later on to attendcollege, purchase a home, or start a business. The City and County of San Francisco was the firstcounty in the United States to offer a publicly funded, universal childrens college savings account(kindergarten to college). In the fall of 2013, Cleveland began the March into Kindergarten CollegeSavings Accounts for 15,000 public school children. Public housing authorities, child-care assistanceprograms, and nonprofit asset building programs have initiated a range of child developmentaccounts.

In addition, a number of communities have implemented place-based scholarship programs offer-ing low-income children the financial resources to attend college. Starting with the Kalamazoo

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Promise in 2005 (see Bartik and Miller-Adams 2009), students attending public schools for all or asignificant portion of their school careers received full or partial-tuition scholarships to earn collegedegrees or post-high school certificates. In addition to facilitating post-secondary educational oppor-tunities, these programs also create incentives for current residents to remain within their commun-ities and encourage new residents to move in. They have served as a catalyst for neighborhood andcommunity development in areas at risk for urban disinvestment and abandonment.

Our Denver housing research, which for the past decade has followed the short- and long-termimpacts of participating in asset building programs (known as the Home Ownership Program orHOP), shows that low-income participants who completed the program accrued substantial benefitsin terms of increasing annual earnings by an average of $3,213 during and $4,523 after HOP partici-pation. Compared to program dropouts, HOP graduates were more likely to make a permanent self-sufficiency exit (55 percent) from public housing. Graduates also were more likely to purchase ahome within five years (30 percent) and move to higher quality neighborhoods. Our recent benefit-cost analysis of the program also found substantial benefits to nonparticipants via reduced taxpayerburden of housing subsidies and enhanced neighborhood quality due to the addition of homeowners.The net benefit to society as a whole was $7,764 per original enrollee (Santiago and Galster 2013),underscoring how targeted, well-conceptualized, and well-delivered anti-poverty programs can fosterwin-win outcomes whereby both poor people and taxpayers benefit and monies can be reinvested inother projects..

Finally, alternative strategies for funding anti-poverty initiatives involve the use of mechanismssuch as social impact or Pay for Success bonds (Liebman 2011; Munoz and Gordon 2012; VonGlahn and Whistler 2011). As Drew Von Glahn and Caroline Whistler (201:19) describe, socialimpact bonds provide funding to innovative and effective service providers for programs that addressparticular societal needs. Instead of initially relying on government funding, philanthropic fundersprovide the financial resources to pay for the program. Government, service providers, and fundersthen agree upon targeted social outcomes, and independent evaluators monitor program perform-ance. If the program reaches the agreed targets, the government reimburses the initial funders fortheir invested capital and then will reinvest in the program, thereby reducing the risk of taxpayerspaying for ineffective programs. If the program fails to meet the targeted outcomes, the governmentis not obligated to repay the investors. By raising the stakes for all parties involved, these pay forsuccess types of initiatives hold great promise as effective and fiscally prudent responses to our soci-etal obligation to provide services to our most vulnerable citizens.

In conclusion, there is an array of anti-poverty strategies that poor people and their allies haveemployed to counter the lack of a champion like Lyndon Johnson and the less favorable economicand political climate that we currently face. As Martin Luther King said nearly 50 years ago, we as anation possess the techniques and resources to eliminate poverty if we so desire. So who are our con-temporary champions? Who amongst us is willing to work in solidarity with the poor to support theirsolutions to poverty and foster their prosperity? Who amongst us is willing to be the voices that chal-lenge the stereotypes and victim blaming of the poor and arouse the American conscience to collec-tive action? Who amongst us is willing to speak out against stereotypes and practices that stigmatizeand often demonize poor children of color as unworthy of our investment in schools and trainingfacilities, youth after school and summer programming, and other supportive services facilitating theirdevelopment, and helping them move beyond the constraints of their poverty? Who amongst us iswilling to challenge the political and social structures that have been and continue to be the rootcauses of poverty locally, regionally, nationally, and globally?

REFERENCESAber, Lawrence, Pamela Morris, and Cybele Raver. 2012. Children, Families, and Poverty: Denitions, Trends,

Emerging Science, and Implications for Policy. Social Policy Report 26:129.

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Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF). 2014. Race for Results: Building a Path to Opportunity for All Children. Baltimore,MD: Annie E. Casey Foundation.

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