The War on Poverty

A Retrospective

Edited by Kyle Farmbry

Publication date:

06 August 2014

Length of book:

300 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739190784

In January of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a "War on Poverty." Over the next several years, the United States launched several programs aimed at drastically reducing the level of poverty throughout the nation. Now fifty years later, we have a number of lessons related to what has and has not worked in the fight against poverty. This book is a collection of chapters by both researchers and practitioners studying and addressing matters of poverty as they intersect with a number of broader social challenges such as health care, education, and criminal justice issues. The War on Poverty: A Retrospective serves as a collection of many of their observations, thoughts, and findings. Ultimately, the authors reflect on some of the lessons of the past fifty years and ask basic questions about poverty and its continued impact on American society, as well as how we might continue to address the challenges that poverty presents for our nation.

Contents
Preface, Kyle Farmbry
Introduction: The War on Poverty – Some Initial Thoughts, Kyle Farmbry
Poverty Policy Link: Three Examples, Sebawit G. Bishu and Mohamad Alkadry
Women and Children in Poverty: How Low Income Female Headed Families
Have Fared Since the War on Poverty, Regina Malveaux and Rachel Dolezal
Immigration and Poverty , Portia Diñoso Campos
“The Movement’s Broadway”: Race, Poverty, Education, and Healthcare in
the State of Mississippi, Jennifer A. Stollman and Susan M. Glisson
Poverty in Appalachia, Joanna Maulbeck
War as Metaphor: The Convergence of the War on Poverty and the
War on Drugs, Keesha Middlemass
Poverty and Juvenile Justice: Exploring the Intersections, Identifying
the Solutions, Al Passarella
Home Sweet Home: Race, Housing, and the Foreclosure Crisis, Rosie Uyola
Not in My Backyard: An Examination of Suburban Gentrification as Tool
for Combating Poverty, Portia Allen-Kyle
Poverty and Health Care, Venessa Perry
The Educational Achievement Gap and Poverty: Lessons of ESEA and Head Start, Franklin Dickerson Turner
Workforce Development in an Era of Diminishing Work, Michael Vorgetts
Worker Cooperatives as Models for Economic Engagement, Daphne Berry
Inclusive Capitalism and Poverty Alleviation, David Madland, Karla Walters, Alex Ingrams
Conclusion, Kyle Farmbry
About the Editor
About the Contributors
Bibliography
Index

Editor Farmbry has assembled a policy-oriented group of scholars and practitioners who produced chapters that together comprehensively cover a range of topics and look back on 50 years of US anti-poverty efforts. Contributors cover the essentials of debates over poverty and its causes—e.g., single motherhood, racism, education, immigration, health care, rural/urban/suburban divides—as well as topics of special interest after the Great Recession, including a superb chapter on policies that contributed to the foreclosure crisis. The policy orientation means chapters cover not only the usual human capital, education, and workforce development strategies for alleviating poverty but also worker cooperatives and programs to promote 'inclusive capitalism'—ways to engage workers in decisions about production and investment and to compensate workers with a greater share of the returns to increased productivity. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.