ABSTRACT
In the 1988 State of the Union address, Ronald Reagan wryly proclaimed: “My friends, some years ago, the Federal Government declared war on poverty, and poverty won.” After reviewing the spending record, he asked:
What has all this money done? Well, too often it has only made poverty harder to escape. Federal welfare programs have created a massive social problem. With the best of intentions, government created a poverty trap that wreaks havoc on the very support system the poor need most to lift themselves out of poverty: the family.
