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Entrenched Poverty - Not So Easy to Fix

Kudos to those at CUCC who have been investigating poverty, economic injustice, and the roots of these maladies. (This includes our Social Justice Ministry, our Economic Justice Task Force, and our Sunday Forum.)

Recommended reading for all of the above (as well as anybody else troubled by the persistence of poverty) is found in Sunday's NY Times in an article entitled "50 Years into the War on Poverty". Here's an excerpt ...

McDowell County, the poorest in West Virginia, has been emblematic of entrenched American poverty for more than a half-century. John F. Kennedy campaigned here in 1960 and was so appalled that he promised to send help if elected president. His first executive order created the modern food stamp program, whose first recipients were McDowell County residents. When President Lyndon B. Johnson declared “unconditional war on poverty” in 1964, it was the squalor of Appalachia he had in mind. The federal programs that followed — Medicare, Medicaid, free school lunches and others — lifted tens of thousands above a subsistence standard of living.

But a half-century later, with the poverty rate again on the rise, hardship seems merely to have taken on a new face in McDowell County. The economy is declining along with the coal industry, towns are hollowed out as people flee, and communities are scarred by family dissolution, prescription drug abuse and a high rate of imprisonment.

Liberals look at this and say, "More government help is needed." Conservatives look and say, "If you're looking for evidence that welfare programs can't fix the problem, this is it." Read and draw your own conclusions. It's an interesting piece.