US Poverty Rates

The Green blog has taken issue with a claim I made in an op-ed published recently in the NZ Herald. The claim;

When the United States declared war on poverty and expanded welfare in the 1960s, poverty won. When it reformed welfare in the 1990s, welfare rolls dropped dramatically and so did poverty levels.

The following chart is from the US Bureau of the Census




Then Frog says; "...And they started to decline in 1993 – three years before the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was signed into law by Bill Clinton. Mitchell is wrong again."

US welfare reform began before 1996. That was when federal reforms were legislated. State reforms began in 1989.

And to claim the trifecta of inaccuracy, under the welfare reforms Mitchell lauds poverty levels rose between 2000 and 2004.


Yes poverty levels have climbed but family poverty, especially that of single female led families, is still considerably lower than in the early nineties.