June 4, 2026 12:12PM # Why Has Poverty Declined in the US? By [Jeffrey Miron](https://www.cato.org/people/jeffrey-miron) --- SHARE Listen to this article Generated with [ ElevenLabs](https://elevenlabs.io/) AI technology. Loading the [Elevenlabs Text to Speech](https://elevenlabs.io/text-to-speech) AudioNative Player... Was President Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty” the main driver of declining poverty rates after 1964? Not according to a [new study](https://www.cato.org/research-briefs-economic-policy/poverty-dependency-united-states-1939-2023). The researchers examined a measure of poverty > that accounts for all taxes and government benefits … \[and\] anchored \[the\] poverty measure to the official poverty rate in 1963. … \[They also\] adjusted income thresholds for inflation and the size of each person’s household. Using this measure, they found that > poverty fell substantially prior to the War on Poverty, primarily due to increases in market income, without a substantial rise in the dependency of working-age adults and their children on government transfers for most of their income. … These trends were particularly stark for black people, who experienced a steep decline in poverty before the War on Poverty. *Cross-posted from* [*Substack*](https://jeffreymiron.substack.com/) ##### Related Tags [Politics and Society](https://www.cato.org/politics-society), [Social Welfare and Poverty](https://www.cato.org/social-welfare-poverty) [![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/).