An intervention analysis of the war on poverty

Abstract

Intervention analysis is used to examine the impact of the War on Poverty on the proportion of income received by families in the lowest quintile of the income distribution in the United States. Evidence presented indicates that the War on Poverty intervention was of the ‘abrupt start, temporary duration’ type and, thus, that the position of the poor was only temporarily affected by the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 and subsequent programs. Residual analysis suggest an interesting ancillary political economy hypothesis: government programs which are ‘marginally funded’ are more likely to be subject to political fine-tuning before Presidential elections than those that are ‘well advertised’ and ‘fully funded’.