Poverty in America
“It is often said that efforts to fight poverty have failed. Surveys suggest only 5% of Americans think that anti-poverty programmes have had a big impact; 47% say they have had no impact or a negative one. And most people think that poverty is spreading—a view expressed by many politicians. In 2014, the current House Speaker, Paul Ryan, then chairman of the House Budget Committee, issued a scathing critique of welfare programmes arguing they ‘are not only failing to address the problem. They are also in some significant respects making it worse.’”