History of poverty in the United States
The history of poverty in the United States covers poor people and antipoverty efforts from the colonial era to the 1990s. The history of poverty and social welfare in the United States begins when English started planning its new colonies and these issues are deeply intertwined with the major political, economic, and social developments that have shaped the American experience.
Women-headed households
Throughout American history, female-headed households had much higher poverty rates compared to their male-headed counterparts. They had fewer assets and much lower incomes, and had multiple children to care for. Many had been servants and had no inherited wealth. This economic vulnerability rendered them the most frequent recipients of support and subjects of intervention from external agents, including Informal aid from kinship networks, charity provided by churches and voluntary organizations, and poor relief administered by local governments.African Americans and racial inequality
Before the 1808 abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, Africans would be brought into the United States as enslaved people, depriving them of all property, and in some cases family. In order to prevent rebellion or escape, the slave codes in some states banned education of slaves, especially teaching a slave to read or write. Free African Americans owned around $50 million by 1860.Slavery was abolished in 1865 with no compensation to owners or ex-slaves. Redistribution of land from white owners to the freedmen was attempted briefly under the forty acres and a mule policy of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman. This was reversed by President Andrew Johnson, a Southerner who also opposed political rights for African Americans.
The Freedmen's Bureau was created as part of the War Department by President Abraham Lincoln to provide shelter and supplies to freed slaves. It was supported by the Republican Congress over the veto of President Johnson, but was soon de-funded and abandoned by a Democratic-controlled Congress in 1872.
After the Civil War the Freedman's Bank helped to foster wealth accumulation for African Americans. However, it failed in 1874, and depositors lost most of their money. This sharply lowered the available support African Americans had to open businesses and acquire wealth.
Poverty was massive in 1940, according to Gunnar Myrdal in his famous study of An American Dilemma :
Except for a small minority enjoying upper- or middle-class status, the masses of American Negroes, in the rural South and in the segregated slum quarters in Southern and Northern cities, have been destitute.... They own little property; even their
household goods are usually inadequate and dilapidated. Their incomes are not only low, but irregular. Thus they live from day to day and have scant security for the future.
The main cause, argued Myrdal and his team, was that most Blacks were based in a backward poverty stricken part of the South:
Negroes are concentrated in the South, which is generally a poor and economically retarded region. A disproportionate number of them work in agriculture, which is a depressed occupation. Most rural Negroes are in Southern cotton
agriculture, which is particularly overpopulated, backward in production methods, and hard hit by soil exhaustion, by the boll weevil, and by a long-time fall in international demand for American cotton. In addition, few Negro farmers own the land they work on, and the little land they do own is much poorer and less well equipped than average Southern farms. Most Negro farmers are concentrated in the lowest occupations in agriculture as sharecroppers or wage laborers.
From the era of escaped slaves to the present, homelessness has been a major factor in Black poverty.
Colonial era
In the early history of the United States, poverty was deeply rooted in the foundational processes of European settlement, including immigration, conquest, and the widespread use of enforced labor. Even as poverty became a more common experience, this era simultaneously fostered the powerful notion of America as a "land of plenty" and the birthplace of a revolutionary ideology. This ideology—centered on freedom and opportunity—would later be utilized by future generations to challenge persistent social and economic inequalities and the poverty they created. The English perception was heavily influenced by promotional efforts in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Richard Hakluyt, an English social theorist, argued in his Discourse on Western Planting that colonizing America would serve as a crucial outlet for the children of England's "wandering beggars," providing them a place to be "unladen" and "better bred up." Gabriel Thomas, in his Historical and Geographical Account of the Province and Country of Pensilvania, described Pennsylvania as a place where poor people could earn three times the wages they would in England or Wales. He further painted a picture of abundance, noting cheap and plentiful food, attractive children, and harmonious residents who "live friendly and well together."Large numbers of vagabonds were among the convicts transported to the American colonies in the 18th century. Many became homeless.
All the colonies had systems for poor relief, usually as variations on the English model that emphasized the local parish. According to Carol Haber, in the eighteenth century:
The family system of support could not meet the needs of all the poverty-stricken. Especially in large cities, aged paupers were placed in public almshouses, often composing one-quarter to one-half of the institutionalized inmates. Generally, these were the most broken and ancient of the senescent; their all too apparent infirmities served as a clear sign of their need for charitable attention. Thus, unlike the able bodied or the vagrant, such elderly persons were not made the target of the public's contempt. Their decrepit state left little doubt that they were worthy recipients of the community's care.
Colonial North Carolina was almost entirely rural. It had a few rich planters with numerous slaves, but largely comprised subsistence white farmers. They typically lived in small log huts, lit only by smokey pine-knot candles. A few owned slaves. Poverty was rare. Land was cheap and the warm climate gave a long growing season and a mild winter. Families produced their own food and traded with neighbors. “Provisions here are extremely cheap and extremely good, so that people may live plentifully at a trifling expense,” noted William Byrd, a close observer. “In truth it is the Best poor mans Cuntry I Ever heard of,” one resident wrote in 1770.
1775 to 1860
Veterans
Starting with the Revolutionary War, servicemen who had significant injuries or were unable to provide for their household were financially supported by the first pension law, which was enacted by the Continental Congress in August 1776. It provided half pay for life or during disability for veterans who were so badly disabled during their service as to be incapable of earning a living. Veterans with partial disability received partial benefits. Similar laws covered all later veterans. The income or poverty of the recipient was not qa factor. After World War I, there was a major grass roots effort for paying a "Bonus" to all its veterans, resulting in the World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 and especially the Adjusted Compensation Payment Act of 1936. It was passed over a President Franklin Roosevelt's veto and paid out $1.5 billion in cash and bonds to all the living veterans of 1917-1919, regardless of their needs.Jefferson on inequality, poverty and civic duty
During the 1770s and 1780s Thomas Jefferson took the lead in ending what he viewed as the feudal and aristocratic laws that threatened to create in Virginia a small landed aristocracy of the sort that controlled the best farmland in England and made for poverty of the masses. The key was the abolition of primogeniture which said the eldest son would inherit all the family land when the father died without a will. The new law said land would be divided equally among all sons and daughters. Another new law abolished entail, a policy in which a man's will could specify that the estate would never be sold, mortgaged or divided up. The result was that Virginia would not see massive inequality with a small elite controlling most of the farmland. In the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Jefferson acquired 530 million acres with enough good farmland for future generations of ambitious yeoman farmers. Congress helped them purchase this land by halving the minimum purchase, and extending credit.Jefferson viewed poverty as a significant societal challenge in the new nation. He argued in 1826 that assistance to the needy was a civic duty. He was narrowly focused on white men. Small farmers every year gambled their herds and crops against disease and drought to feed their families and the nation. He recommended localized poor relief systems, believing aid was best administered by local communities rather than a centralized national authority. He considered beggars as morally suspect and placed them outside the bounds of organized, legitimate charity. Jefferson maintained an optimistic outlook regarding the efficacy of the nascent American poor-relief system. Nonetheless, poverty remained a persistent, endemic issue throughout the early nation, highlighting a gap between his idealized vision for relief and the on-the-ground reality.