Fifty years and one day after President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty, LeBaron Harvey was slicing strawberries last week in Cathedral Kitchen, a Camden nonprofit that feeds the poor.
Growing up in Camden, Harvey, 32, said he was kept alive by the food-stamp program, greatly expanded under Johnson's initiatives. Harvey learned to be a chef at Cathedral; he hopes to open an Asian/soul-food restaurant.
"In the projects I come from, food stamps were a main means of income," said Harvey, quick and efficient with the knife that's become his weapon of choice in LBJ's endless war. "After my [janitor] dad was laid off, our household collapsed. The program was all we had."
Food stamps still are a major part of the safety net that Johnson began weaving in 1964.
Regardless, the political right insists that the war on poverty has been lost, with trillions of dollars wasted. Their proof? Nearly 50 million Americans - including almost 27 percent of Philadelphians - continue to live in poverty.
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That the war on poverty failed is easy to show, conservatives say.
The official national poverty measure was 14 percent in 1967 and is about 15 percent today.
A Columbia University study released last month - and officially presented to President Obama - suggests those numbers may be misleading.
A newer method of calculating poverty gives a more accurate picture of deprivation. The so-called supplemental poverty measure takes into account the benefits that the poor receive - including SNAP, tax credits, WIC, and school meals. It also totes up how much a family pays to survive, including health-care costs, taxes, child care, and housing.
Looking through this new lens, Columbia researchers found that the poverty rate in 1967 was closer to 26 percent, while the rate in 2011 (the latest available) was 16 percent.
Given these calculations, researchers said, the war on poverty actually did have an effect, since poverty fell almost 40 percent.
1964's War on Poverty: Failed or abandoned? - Philly.com
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