Public Assistance and Social Welfare

The War on Poverty
With the opening of the 1960s, the American people witnessed the largest expansion of government spending on social welfare in United States history. Declaring war on poverty, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson embarked upon a campaign to make the American dream a realizable goal for the entire nation. Racial conflict, increased out-of-wedlock births, inadequate education, rising unemployment, and fear of Soviet competition, among other things, prompted a search for new ways to address the ever-widening gulf between rich and poor. Governmental authorities made no effort to redistribute wealth, guarantee incomes, or tamper with the structure of American capitalism. Rather, an underlying belief in the power of sustained economic growth to ameliorate human suffering and injustice remained the guiding principle of the War on Poverty.1

According to the historian Michael Katz, "for the first time, social welfare policy became one strategy for attacking the consequences of racism in America." In the context of the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement protrayed the historic links between race, poverty, and opportunity as a national disgrace. Mounting racial tensions in both the North and the South forced many to recognize poverty as a racial issue. With a Democratic Party dependent on black votes, the influence of the civil rights movement helped shape what some have called the most effective poor people's movement in American history. Indeed, as its objectives broadened from segregation and voting to housing, jobs, and education, the civil rights movement helped fashion a "new citizen's movement" whose strength rested in grassroots, community action as an instrument for social change.2

The War on Poverty sought to provide opportunity rather than equality; the chance to compete regardless of birth for the success to which all Americans are entitled. With its emphasis on opportunity, social welfare policy during the 1960s viewed education as one way in which to level the playing field. Operation Headstart, one of the most successful programs created by the Economic Opportunity Act (1964), funded special preschool programs for disadvantaged children. In addition, the Higher Education Act of 1965 distributed scholarships and low-interest government loans for undergraduates.3

Programs to promote opportunity also concentrated on juvenile delinquency, civil rights, and job training. The Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Offenses Act of 1961 represented the federal government's major attempts to deal with youth crime. In 1964, the Economic Opportunity Act or OEO, created Job Corps, the largest manpower training program in the nation, though its success was limited to a fraction of the population it trained. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 helped to end discrimination in employment and education, and desegregate public accommodations and housing. Together, between 1965 and 1972, War on Poverty programs such as these fueled a massive increase in federal spending on social welfare-from $75 billion to $185 billion.4

Despite the limited success of some of the War on Poverty, it nevertheless reshaped the relationship between Americans and their government, partly redefined poverty as a consequence of powerlessness, and empowered community action as a legitimate engine of social change. Through its multifaceted programs, the federal government assisted more disadvantaged Americans than ever before, reduced discrimination and increased the accessibility of jobs to minorities, and proved that "the federal government has the resources and the administrative capacity with which to stimulate and sustain progressive social change.".5