How We Lost The War On Poverty Ed By M Pilisuk And Ph Pilisuk

Social Change and the Empowerment of the Poor provides insight into the local impact of a variety of federal programs funded by the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. Specifically, Mark Edward Braun's dramatic social history examines seven anti-poverty programs--Community Action Programs (CAPs)--started in Milwaukee in the 1960s. Braun's research confirms that, unlike most other cities, Milwaukee's deteriorating urban neighborhoods were transformed by these initiatives. CAPs successfully empowered Milwaukee's poor, made public officials and institutions more accountable to the needs of the poor, reformed punitive legislation, created new community-based organizations, expanded social services for people of color, and challenged elites. This book provides an excellent framework for future studies that will add to the current scholarly interest in the long-term results of CAPs. Braun simultaneously dispels the myth that CAPs were a categorical failure, and brings a provocative new voice to urban studies, social activism, policy studies and political science.

This is the second in a series of books growing out of the annual Mid dlebury College Conference on Economic Issues. The second confer ence, held in April 1980, focused on goals and realities of welfare reform. The objectives of the conference were threefold: (1) evaluation of the antipoverty effort so far; (2) discussion of welfare reform alternatives; and (3) prediction of how new initiatives would change work behavior and productivity. During the time this country has been engaged in a "war on poverty," two massive efforts to reform welfare, Richard M. Nixon's Family As sistance Plan (FAP) and Jimmy Carter's Program for Better Jobs and Income (PBJI), were proposed. Both defined national benefit levels and featured a negative income tax. Both measures were defeated in Congress. More modest efforts at reform have, however, changed the economic landscape. Because of the rapid growth in cash and in-kind transfer programs, income poverty is no longer the serious problem that it was in 1964. In fact, looking at the proliferation of programs and the substantial surge in participation rates, some politicians have even advocated a period of government retrenchment. In 1971, the governor of California vii viii INTRODUCTION proposed (and implemented) a major welfare reform in an attempt to stem the rapid growth of welfare caseloads that began in his state in 1967-68. He argued that savings from administrative improvements could be used to raise benefits for the "truly needy.