www.heritage.org
www.census.gov
www.heritage.org
Basically - we have spent over 5 TRILLION on reducing poverty in this country with no discernable difference in the poverty rate since 1968.
from the 50's to the 60's poverty rate dropped from 20% of the population to around 13% where it has roughly stayed since....no matter the "war on poverty" of LBJ, the Great Society, Welfare, Workfare, Food coupons, ect.
Why - one of the main reason is that the definition of poverty in the US has constantly changed. The average income line for poverty has been adjusted to meet the political demands of the time. As it is; the poor in America lead everyother countries poor in all the basics by a large margin.
As an example: The average person living in poverty today has more square footage of living space than a middle class European.
There are 86 countries where a significant portion of the population live on less than 2 dollars a day in income.
So if just throwing money at a problem doesn't fix it what does? There is a group at MIT that has done multiple studies and found - suprise surprise - INCENTIVES change behavior - which change poverty. Two excerpts below:
www.fastcompany.com
"To find out whether incentives would inspire teachers to work harder, they persuaded the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh to promise bonuses to teachers based on improvement of their pupils' test scores. The massive experiment, covering 300 primary schools, found that even small amounts of performance-based pay led to substantial improvement on tests. Educators weren't just teaching to the test: Students scored higher on both mechanical questions and those measuring their understanding of broader concepts."
"Working with the Indian charity Seva Mandir, his team randomly placed mothers into two groups: One received free delivery of immunizations, while the other received delivery plus 1 kilogram of lentils per visit -- and, after her child completed all vaccinations, a set of bowls. Immunization rates barely improved in the delivery-only group, but in the lentils group, they jumped to 37%. "A bag of lentils is not going to do anything," says Banerjee, "if people really have those traditional beliefs."
The net is: 1) Incentives - Pay for work is the primary motivator for any population 2) Using money to add INCENTIVES for working is the best way to address poerty - NOT paying people who are doing nothing - that is a disincentive.
In the US the primary drivers for poverty is 1) unmarried women without a husband (23% in the poverty level) 2) lack of work - not that they could not get it..people just not trying.
