...In all, some 200 anti-poverty laws and related programs were enacted during Johnson’s administration. They now cost more than $1 trillion combined annually and represent the third most expensive government expenditure—exceeding national defense spending.
...But if we want less poverty, do we really need more government?
Some people certainly think so. According to a Washington Post article commemorating the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty, “Government action is literally the only reason we have less poverty in 2012 than we did in 1967.”
On the contrary, American poverty rates were already declining 15 years before President Johnson’s declaration of war, dropping from 35 percent to 19 percent in 1964. Over the next two years that decline accelerated, dropping to just below 15 percent in 1966, before anti-poverty programs and spending increases were in full effect.
So not only did the poverty rate drop by more than half in the decades prior to the War on Poverty, the downward trend was accelerating without government intervention. Since 1967, however, the poverty rate has remained largely flat hovering between 11 percent and 15 percent.
...The estimated aggregate cost of the War on Poverty is nearly $28 trillion, which is three and a half times higher than the $8 trillion total price tag of every major war since the American Revolution. What’s more, since 1965 government-transfer payments to low-income families have increased more than ten-fold, from just over $3,000 per person to more than $34,000 per person, in inflation-adjusted dollars. If the federal government counted these payments as income, the poverty rate would be around 3 percent.
Yet increasing welfare spending and growing government hasn’t cured poverty. In fact, myriad government regulations on everyday necessities make the average cost of living more expensive for all Americans, which disproportionately impacts the most impoverished who can least afford it.
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