May 23, 2007 10:23AM # A Rising Tide Lifts all Boats By [Daniel J. Mitchell](https://www.cato.org/people/daniel-mitchell) --- SHARE 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 ](http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=8113&sequence=0&from=7)from the Congressional Budget Office looks at income trends for families with children and confirms JFK’s wisdom. The *Wall Street Journal* [reviews ](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117988547410811664.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep)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. ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy), [Trade Policy](https://www.cato.org/trade-policy), [Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies](https://www.cato.org/herbert-stiefel-center-trade-policy-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).