Poverty Welfare free essay sample

Successes failures of anti-poverty welfare programs, demographics, gap between rich poor, education employment, future. Despite decades of social welfare programs, the federal government has largely failed in its War on Poverty. The failure of these programs has created a social deficit in which impoverished individuals are caught up in a dependency cycle on public assistance. Demographic changes, such as the high rate of teenaged pregnancy, have simultaneously contributed to the increase in the poor population in America and created a feminization of poverty. Federal social welfare programs are designed to aid those individuals whose incomes fall below the poverty line. An estimated 30 million Americans live in poverty (Ford, 1989, p. 1). Federal programs have succeeded in contributing to a decrease in the number of elderly poor. Before President Johnsons War on Poverty in the 1960s, almost 30 percent of the