Perpetuating Poverty

The Conquest of Poverty By Henry Hazlitt

Arlington, 240 pp., $8.95 Poverty was rather capriciously defined by the Johnson Administration as $3,000 a year for a family of four. By this standard, adjusting for inflation, half of the American people were poor in the prosperous 1920s, 32 per cent were poor in 1935, 23 per cent in 1959, and 11 per cent in 1967. If that trend continues, there will be no poor people left by around 1980. Obviously, that can’t be allowed to happen: too many sociologists and social workers would be unemployed. Accordingly, it is essential that the definition of poverty be adjusted upward from time to time. One way of doing this is to define poverty in relative terms—to imply, for example, that there really shouldn’t be any bottom fifth of income recipients.

About the Author

Alan Reynolds

Alan Reynolds, National Review’s economics editor from 1972 to 1976, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of Income and Wealth.

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The Conquest of Poverty By Henry Hazlitt

Arlington, 240 pp., $8.95 Poverty was rather capriciously defined by the Johnson Administration as $3,000 a year for a family of four. By this standard, adjusting for inflation, half of the American people were poor in the prosperous 1920s, 32 per cent were poor in 1935, 23 per cent in 1959, and 11 per cent in 1967. If that trend continues, there will be no poor people left by around 1980. Obviously, that can’t be allowed to happen: too many sociologists and social workers would be unemployed. Accordingly, it is essential that the definition of poverty be adjusted upward from time to time. One way of doing this is to define poverty in relative terms—to imply, for example, that there really shouldn’t be any bottom fifth of income recipients.