What is wrong about the conservative quip is the idea we actually fought a “war” on poverty. LBJ made a huge strategic error when he told America that we were going to fight an “an unconditional war” on poverty, and then went on to propose what amounted to a minor skirmish in what became the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.

The programs you mention are all good programs that reduced economic hardship, but they likely contributed only modestly to the reduction in poverty between 1964 and 1973. Remember here that poverty fell as much between 1947 and 1964 as did in the decade following the declaration of “war.” The New Deal and other progressive economic policies that brought about the post-WWII “Great Compression” did much more than the EOA and subsequent Nixon-era policies.

On elderly poverty, Social Security and Medicare (as well as SSI and Medicaid) have been tremendously successful, but it is worth noting here that the new Supplemental Poverty Measure suggests that elderly poverty is actually about twice as high as the FPL measure says it is, and nearly as high as the child poverty rate.

As Hillary Hoynes and her colleagues have shown, poverty rates for the non-elderly since the mid-1960s can be explained by three economic indicators: unemployment, median wages, and growing wage dispersion between middle and low-wage workers. If we want to reduce poverty going forward, we need to get serious about the fundamental role that collective bargaining, the minimum wage and other labor market and economic institutions play in determining the poverty rate. Strenghtening these institutions needs to be at the center of any serious effort to reduce poverty rather than at the margins.

One final thought: it would be good for progressive anti-poverty advocates to rediscover the working class and class generally, especially since the vast majority of people living below the poverty line today self-identify in class terms as either working or middle class.