Poverty as a public concern has been with us for a long time. That the issue has endured is a testament to just how compelling it is, despite being so contentious and resistant to easy resolution. Just why is it so compelling, at least to us self-described policy- wonks at least, while remaining such an annoying distraction to most of society?

At the end of the day, poverty is what we call a ‘wicked social problem’ where we are confused about: (1) the nature of the problem; (2) the theories and evidence brought to bear on the issue; (3) the ends and goals we are trying to achieve; and (4) the means for achieving those identified ends. Really, who doesn’t want to spend their professional life tackling that kind of hopeless challenge.

I am reminded of a story I shared at my retirement party. I noted what a marvelous career I had fallen into … a career where I got to fly around the country to work with the best and brightest on some of society’s most vexing problems: Poverty and welfare reform and the optimal structure of the social safety net. For me, this was like working in a professional candy store. All sorts of policy delights were enticingly laid out before me. All I had to do was pick and choose which would engage my attention. If I were to become bored, I could move on to the next. I could hardly have hoped for anything better.

My career was great fun but also challenging in the extreme. Consider the following: President Kennedy promised to put a man on the moon within a decade, and we did it; President Johnson launched a war on poverty shortly after, with not such a great result. Conquering space was primarily a technological challenge, while poverty and welfare reform are complicated by a set of underlying human factors. One of my favorite mantras during the height of the welfare reform debates was that ‘I knew I was approaching the truth when no one else agreed with me.‘

We often date our national focus on Poverty to the 1960s. But there is, of course, a much longer history. This ‘poverty as a public issue’ story is not unimodal, rising once to national prominence and then fading from view. Rather, it is cyclical … rising and falling several times.

With rapid urbanization, industrialization, and a resurgence of immigration (particularly from Southern and Eastern European countries along with a second blight-related surge from Ireland), poverty emerged as an object of significant public attention in our post civil war period. In response, there arose several policy initiatives including Charity Organization Societies (to bring some coherence to the confusing array of local efforts), the Scientific Charity Movement (to bring some rigor to the investigation of distressed families), and a number of Settlement Houses (to help mostly poor, recent ethnic immigrants integrate into American society). With the exception of a Civil War pension program, virtually all aid to the poor was local, much of it private, and all of it disorganized.

Above all, a fundamental aspect of the subsequent national debate about poverty was evident: the distinction between poverty and pauperism, between institutional or environmental explanations of economic vulnerability and those explanations based on perceived personal failings. It was the classic distinction between what was thought of as the ‘worthy‘ and the ‘unworthy‘ poor, a distinction that would remain with us through time and color all future policy debates. Those debates, as you will see, became heated at times. This would not be a professional focus for the faint of heart.

In the next blog in this series, I turn to what is called the Wisconsin idea where scholarship is devoted to society’s more demanding issues.