The U.S. poverty rate has not been ‘Frozen around 15%’ since the Great Society

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes just a little research reveals that a political pundit doesn’t know what he’s talking about. A post by Bob ‘Nugie” Neugebauer at the Gem State Patriot News blog on June 22, 2025 titled Idaho Faces Growth and Ideological Challenges claims:

 

“Our nation’s welfare system represents a catastrophic failure that has entrenched poverty rather than eliminating it. Since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs, poverty rates have remained frozen around 15% instead of continuing their post-World War II decline. This system rewards dependency by incentivizing single-parent households, discouraging marriage, and enabling able-bodied individuals to avoid work.”

 

Did he look that up or just borrow it from somewhere else? I found an article by Rachel Bade at Politico on September 17, 2013 including that headline. It is titled Pro Report, presented by POWERJOBS: Obama orders security revie – Navy cut security to reduce costs – U. S. poverty rate frozen at 15 percent – Uninsured rate declines. It says:

 

“U.S. POVERTY RATE FROZEN AT 15 PERCENT. One-in-seven Americans still lived below the poverty line last year, several years out from the recession. (The poverty line, FYI is just over $23,400 for a family of four). That’s about the same as last year, and the sixth straight year without improvement, according to an AP analysis. Although the unemployment rate sank from 9.6 percent in 2010 to 8.1 percent last year, poverty didn’t, and that’s unusual, analysts say: ‘Typically, the poverty rate tends to move in a similar direction as the unemployment rate, so many analysts had been expecting a modest decline in poverty,’ AP’s Hope Yen writes.”

 

There also is a 2017 book by Jon H. Widener titled The Nexus: Understanding Faith and Modern Culture which says:

 

“In the US, the poverty rate was going down until President Lyndon Johnson began the War on Poverty in the 1960s. Since then the poverty rate has been frozen at 14 to 15 percent and has stayed there despite an outlay of $20 trillion over all those years and despite the continuing outlay of $1 trillion a year. The unabashedly collectivist Obama administration continued these policies during its eight years.”

 

Another article at Debt.org on December 21, 2023 titled Poverty in the United States has a section titled Poverty Levels Over Time which instead states:

 

“In the late 1950s the poverty rate in the U.S. was approximately 22%, with just shy of 40 million Americans living in poverty. The rate declined steadily, reaching a low of 11.1% in 1973 and rising to a high of nearly 15% three times – in 1983, 1993, and 2011 – before hitting an all-time low of 10.5% in 2019. However, the 46.7 million Americans in poverty in 2014 was the most ever recorded.”   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I looked up a detailed report by Robert D. Plotnik et al. of the Institute for Research on Poverty titled The Twentieth Century Record of Inequality and Poverty in the United States (Discussion Paper 1166-98 July 1998). Figure 3 on page 24 is shown above, with data for 1947 to 1996 (I added the times for the Great Society). Since those programs ended in 1968 the poverty rate ranged from 12% to 15% and never was frozen. In 1974 the rate hit a minimum of around 12%, 3% lower than the 15% cited by Mr. Neugebauer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How about more recently? There is a web page by Abigail Tierney at statista on September 16, 2024 titled Poverty rate in the United States from 1990 to 2023. A replot of her graph is shown above. The only time the rate was ‘frozen’ at around 15% was between 2010 and 2014. It was ‘frozen’ at 12.6% from 2003 to 2005 and at 11.5% from 2020 to 2022. In 2019 (under Trump) the poverty rate had fallen to 10.5%, which is 4.5% lower than the 15% cited by Mr. Neugebauer. Clearly he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

 

The 1883 Josh Shaw painting of empty pockets was adapted from Wikimedia Commons.