Kennedy was right. Not Teddy Kennedy, of course, but his brother. President John F. Kennedy stated that a rising tide of economic growth generated benefits for all. A new study from the Congressional Budget Office looks at income trends for families with children and confirms JFK’s wisdom. The Wall Street Journal reviews the key findings:
A new study by the Congressional Budget Office says the poor have been getting less poor. On average, CBO found that low‐wage households with children had incomes after inflation that were more than one‐third higher in 2005 than in 1991. The CBO results don’t fit the prevailing media stereotype of the U.S. economy as a richer take all affair — which may explain why you haven’t read about them. … The poorest even had higher earnings growth than the richest 20%. The earnings of these poor households are about 80% higher today than in the early 1990s. … CBO says … earnings from work climbed sharply as the 1996 welfare reform pushed at least one family breadwinner into the job market. … earnings for low‐income families have still nearly doubled in the years since welfare reform became law. Some two million welfare mothers have left the dole for jobs since the mid‐1990s. Far from being a disaster for the poor, as most on the left claimed when it was debated, welfare reform has proven to be a boon. … The report also rebuts the claim, fashionable in some precincts on CNN, that the middle class is losing ground. … every class saw significant gains in income. … the CBO study found that, with the exception of chronically poor families who have no breadwinner, low‐income job holders are climbing the income ladder. When CBO examined surveys of the same poor families over a two year period, 2001–2003, it found that “the average income for those households increased by nearly 45%.” That’s especially impressive considering that those were two of the weakest years for economic growth across the 15 years of the larger study.