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Buried deep underneath the shrill  banking crisis headlines  is a National League of Cities (NLC) report  that shows that forty years after the federal government declared “war” on poverty 90 percent of municipal leaders surveyed said that poverty has either increased or stayed the same in their cities over the past decade.

 

The War on Poverty is the name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to the difficult economic conditions associated with a national poverty rate of around nineteen percent. The War on Poverty speech led the United States Congress to pass the Economic Opportunity Act, a law that established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to administrate the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty.

The 'official' 2008 poverty rate is 12.3 percent, not even 2 percent less than the 1967 figure of 14.2 per cent," the report said.

According to those surveyed in the NLC study the two most effective strategies for reducing poverty within their capacity to implement are economic development to bring more businesses and jobs into the community (identified by 89 percent of officials), and strengthening neighborhoods by making them safer and enhancing services (identified by 86 percent).  However, 72 percent believe that federal policies have more of an overall impact on reducing poverty.

City officials cited the biggest barriers to combating poverty as being insufficient city government resources (81 percent) and outside economic factors (83 percent).

“This study indicates that while cities are ready to step up and confront the challenges of poverty, there is only so much cities can do without supportive federal policies to help them succeed,” said Donald J. Borut, executive director of NLC. “After years of a hands off federal approach, the next Administration must re-examine the federal government’s role vis-à-vis our cities and develop policies and programs to address those needs. This becomes even more important as we confront the long term consequences of the current financial crisis.”

The report noted that one step the federal government could take to help cities is to update its method to measure poverty, which was developed in the early 1960s and has changed little since despite new technologies, uneven inflation among household needs and the shifting priorities of American households. The measure shapes the content and extent of many federal and other programs.

Seventy-one percent of local elected officials reported that a family of three would need more than the current federal poverty threshold of $17,600 to make ends meet, with 41 percent reporting a family of three would need between $20,000 and $30,000 and 30 percent reporting $30,000 or higher.  

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