President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a nearly $1 billion anti-poverty measure in 1964.

“Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope—some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity. This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.”

—President Lyndon B. Johnson, State of the Union Address, January 8, 1964

In his January 1964 State of the Union address, President Johnson announced a “War on Poverty.” At the time, an estimated 20% of Americans were living in poverty, yet poverty was only recently being perceived as a significant social issue. Johnson pledged to correct the problem. Johnson’s first anti-poverty bill, passed through Congress as part of Kennedy’s legacy, was signed into law on this day in 1964. The bill provided money for job training centers, loans for students and farmers, as well as other anti-poverty programs. Johnson created the Office of Economic Opportunity to oversee the poverty programs and placed it under the control of Sargeant Shriver, a Kennedy brother-in-law who had operated the fledgling Peace Corps under President Kennedy. Johnson later initiated a larger, more comprehensive legislative package addressing poverty and other domestic social issues, know as the Great Society programs.

EconEdLink
The EconEdLink lesson Income: It Ain’t Where You Start, It’s What You Got, and Where You End (9–12), focused on the federal elections of 1999, helps students learn about different political arguments regarding the distribution of wealth in the United States.

Students compare poverty rates in countries around the world in Economic Sectors and International Development (9–12).

ARTSEDGE
In Understanding Tenement Life (K–4), students explore, through photographs and stories, what daily life was like for the millions of poor Irish, German, Jewish and Italian immigrants living in crowded, dirty, dark, unheated and dangerous tenement apartments at the turn of the century.