WASHINGTON – Should we fight the “war on poverty” all over again?
Well, yes. That’s the recommendation of a group of liberal and conservative poverty scholars, who spent months discussing and arguing to see if they could find common ground. They did. Their new report – “Opportunity, Responsibility and Security” – lays out a plausible strategy for confronting poverty. The study was co-sponsored by the left-leaning Brookings Institution and the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
Recall that the first war on poverty, begun by Lyndon Johnson in 1964, fell far short. In 2014, the official poverty rate (the share of people under the government’s poverty line of cash income) was 14.8 percent, up slightly from 1966’s 14.7 percent. By some other measures, poverty has declined. But clearly, there are still lots of poor people.
In general, the group wants to make work more attractive to the poor. It proposed expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (the EITC is a wage subsidy, providing payments for workers up to designated income levels). It also backed a higher minimum wage.
To improve workers’ skills, the group urged that two-year and four-year colleges be publicly evaluated on their graduation rates and students’ job placements and wages (the idea is to steer students toward the most effective schools). The pro-work bias also suggested that some government benefits – food stamps, for example – be tied to a requirement that recipients work.
To continue reading this essay by columnist Robert Samuelson, go to: http://www.ocregister.com/arti...overty-children.html
To read the report, go to: http://www.brookings.edu/resea...erty-and-opportunity
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