Legacies of the War on Poverty, a new book co-edited by Martha Bailey and Sheldon Danziger (Russell Sage Foundation, September 2013), offers a timely assessment of the War on Poverty, highlighting some remarkable policy successes of President Johnson’s antipoverty reforms in the 1960s—many of which still form the basis of the social safety net as we know it today. As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of Johnson’s 1964 State of the Union address—the speech in which he declared an “unconditional war on poverty”—we will feature research and additional author insights from the book in an ongoing Q&A series on the RSF blog.

Our first interview is with Jane Waldfogel, professor of social work and public affairs at the Columbia University School of Social Work and author of the chapter “The Safety Net for Families with Children.” Waldfogel’s research examines the lasting effects of War on Poverty initiatives for low-income families with children, focusing on three enduring areas of the Johnson administration’s efforts to provide support for poor families, including food assistance benefits, cash welfare, and employment-contingent income support. A policy brief on the research from her chapter can be found here.

Q. Your chapter in Legacies of the War on Poverty illustrates the success of Food Stamps-SNAP in reducing food insecurity and lowering poverty rates (when using the Supplemental Poverty Measure). Yet, the House recently passed a bill that would cut SNAP by almost $40 million. What kinds of political shifts have occurred between the start of the War on Poverty and today that would account for this dramatic turn?

A. At the time of the War on Poverty, the country’s attention was focused on the problems of severe poverty and malnutrition, and President Johnson was eager to address them. Johnson, like many politicians today, also worried about not fostering dependency, but the larger concern at that time was addressing the really stark poverty and hunger that existed. Today, the situation is different. While poverty and food insecurity are still present, they are less severe than in the 1960s, so perhaps this makes it harder to generate public support for measures to address them. But I think the most important factor is simply that many Republicans are increasingly focused on cutting back the role of government and shrinking the social safety net—regardless of need. This seems to have become of first-order importance for the Republican Party, even if families are living in poverty or are food insecure.

Q. You note that welfare-to-work initiatives such as the EITC are successful at lowering the poverty rate, but do not necessarily work to their fullest potential in times of high unemployment and competitive job markets. Following the 2008 economic downturn, what kind of updates can we make to War on Poverty policies in order to better strengthen our current safety net?

A. When we shifted to a more work-oriented safety net in the 1990s, one open question was how that safety net would perform in an economic downturn. We now have the answer: if not for the expansions in other portions of the safety net during the recent Great Recession, many more Americans would have been plunged into poverty, or deeper into poverty, by the loss of both earnings and earnings-related benefits like the EITC. So it’s clear that we need to ensure that we have a safety net that is not completely reliant on work—that provides protection for families when adults are out of work, or working short hours, or on very low wages. SNAP (Food Stamps) are a key part of that safety net but they are not enough—we also need child tax credits that provide a minimum income floor for all families with children.

Q. You point out that although child-care subsidies (first established in the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act and greatly expanded under welfare reform in the 1990s) both offset the cost of child care for low-income mothers and provide an incentive for them to work, the subsidies have shown only neutral or negative effects on child health and development. What are some explanations for these results, and how might we improve the program?

A. This is a tough one. Those of us who do research on child care talk about the “iron triangle”—the tension that exists between affordability, access, and quality. The primary goal of child care subsidies has been to enable low income women to work, and so the emphasis has been on the first two legs— affordability and access. But if child care is to promote child health and development, it needs to be high quality—which means higher costs and, with limited dollars, less access. So it’s a dilemma. But clearly if we want to improve child health and development, we’re going to have to invest more heavily in quality. I think also children would benefit from uncoupling some child care subsidies from work. Once a child is age 3 or 4, they can only benefit from having a chance to attend a high quality preschool. Their chance to obtain a subsidized slot should not depend on whether their mother is working, or working regularly. In fact, low-income children whose mothers aren’t working or working intermittently might well benefit the most from high-quality child care. So I think we need to be expanding access to universal preschool and pre-kindergarten for 3 and 4 year olds alongside providing work-related subsidies for child care for low income parents with younger or older children.

Q. In the conclusion of your chapter, you recommend a true guaranteed minimum income for low-income families. Could an expanded child tax credit (CTC) meet that goal? And what are some additional components of successful safety nets used in other countries that have effectively lowered poverty rates?

A. Yes, an expanded child tax credit—that reaches all low-income families with children, and at a higher level than exists today—would be a great step in the direction of a guaranteed minimum income for low-income families. But if we are going to reduce poverty in the long-run, we have to both raise family incomes for today’s families with children and make investments in children that will enable them to avoid poverty in future, when they become parents. That’s why investing in quality preschool and pre-kindergarten is so important—to help low-income children enter school on a more equal footing, so that they have a better chance of doing well in school, graduating high school, getting higher education, and having a shot at a middle class job and life.

Q. Last week the Department of Agriculture noted that without Congressional approval of new spending by October 1, funding for WIC benefits would vanish. With the partial government shutdown that has gone into effect, what are some of the possible consequences for low-income women with children?

A. If I had to pick a government program to shut down, WIC would be about last on my list. WIC provides approved nutritious foods to about 9 million low-income pregnant women, newborns, and toddlers. So it serves highly vulnerable groups, during a critically important period of development, and delivers highly specific and tangible benefits. We know a good deal about the benefits of receiving WIC. Women who receive WIC prenatally deliver higher birthweight babies, an impact with lasting consequences for those children. And children who receive WIC as infants and toddlers not only benefit from better nutrition and health (reduced anemia, for instance), but also go on to have higher test scores. If it is thought that shutting down the government doesn't really hurt anyone, the case of WIC provides powerful evidence to the contrary.