{"id":18058,"date":"2014-04-30T15:15:26","date_gmt":"2014-04-30T20:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/?p=18058"},"modified":"2026-04-09T13:12:57","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T17:12:57","slug":"professor-robert-hudson-pens-editorial-for-bu-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/professor-robert-hudson-pens-editorial-for-bu-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Robert B. Hudson Pens Editorial for BU Today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On January 8, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson committed the nation to an unconditional war on poverty. \u201cIt will not be a short or easy struggle,\u201d Johnson said, \u201cbut we shall not rest until that war is won.\u201d Johnson aimed to cure and prevent poverty. \u201cThe richest nation on Earth can afford to win it. We cannot afford to lose it,\u201d he professed. As commentary and criticisms commenced during the War on Poverty\u2019s 50th anniversary, Boston University School of Social Work Professor <strong>Robert B. Hudson<\/strong> weighs in on the war\u2019s outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAssessing the degree to which \u2018the war\u2019 was won or lost comes down to determining which so called war we\u2019re talking about, and how to measure the results,\u201d Hudson explained. Johnson\u2019s war focused almost exclusively on the Economic Opportunity Act (EOA), a program that reached a high level of funding in 1968 with $2 billion, compared to Social Security\u2019s $30 billion at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s retrospectives address the various actions taken by the federal government to battle poverty, efforts that are far broader than those in the 1960s. \u201cMuch of the debate on their effectiveness centers on measurement issues,\u201d Hudson said. A recent study by Columbia University researchers found that inclusion of government transfer benefits in the poverty measurement, which official calculations omit, led to a significant poverty reduction. However, \u201cthe 40 million people still battling poverty question the meaning of that success,\u201d Hudson explained.<\/p>\n<p>The mixed antipoverty results cannot ignore the remarkable drop in poverty rates among people 65 and older. Dropping from 39% in 1959 to 9% today, due in large part to Social Security, \u201crepresents America\u2019s most successful poverty reduction intervention,\u201d Hudson said. \u201cIt speaks to both the policy and political accomplishments that can be brought about through targeted universal and non-means-tested programming.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hudson\u2019s full <em>BU Today<\/em> editorial can be found <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/articles\/2014\/pov-war-on-poverty-50-years-later\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On January 8, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson committed the nation to an unconditional war on poverty. \u201cIt will not be a short or easy struggle,\u201d Johnson said, \u201cbut we shall not rest until that war is won.\u201d Johnson aimed to cure and prevent poverty. \u201cThe richest nation on Earth can afford to win it. We [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8473,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7427,4057],"tags":[5035,7356,7284],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18058"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8473"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18058"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80847,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18058\/revisions\/80847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}