ABSTRACT
The antipoverty programs of the War on Poverty and the Great Society of the 1960s have come under frequent attack during the 1980s. In February 1986, in one of his Saturday radio addresses, President Ronald Reagan made this charge:
In 1964, the famous War on Poverty was declared. And a funny thing happened. Poverty, as measured by dependency, stopped shrinking and then actually began to grow worse. I guess you could say, "Poverty won the War." Poverty won, in part, because instead of helping the poor, government programs ruptured the bonds holding poor families together.
