History of poverty in the United States

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The History of poverty in the United States covers poor people and antipoverty efforts from the colonial era to the 1950s. 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.

Contents

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. [1] [2]

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 (1584) 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 (1698), 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." [3]

All the colonies had poor relief systems, usually as variations on the English model that emphasized the local parish. [4]

Colonial North Carolina had a few rich planters, 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. [5]

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 and extended to every officer, soldier or sailor losing a limb in any engagement, or being so disabled in the service of the United States as to render him incapable of earning a living. The resolution allowed for proportionate relief to those who were partially disabled from earning a living. [6] Similar laws covered all later veterans [7]

Jefferson on Civic duty

Thomas Jefferson in 1826 viewed poverty as a significant societal challenge in the new nation. [8] He argued 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. [9]

1860 to 1890

Postwar South

Poor houses and poor farms

Frederick County Poor Farm in Virginia Frederick County Poor Farm 4.jpg
Frederick County Poor Farm in Virginia

Poor houses or almshouses and their rural counterpart, poor farms, were dominant public welfare institutions in the United States throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. These facilities were deliberately designed to be "spartan and uncomfortable" to encourage residents to work their way out of poverty, reflecting the societal stigma and shame placed on the indigent. They served as a local solution to poverty before the establishment of modern federal welfare programs like Social Security and Medicaid. Poor farms were typically working farms where able-bodied residents were required to labor in the fields and perform housekeeping/care tasks to the extent their health allowed. The terminology for this sort of residential welfare was "indoor relief"; cash payments made to poor people living on their own was called "outdoor relief." [10] [11]

Poor houses were common during the 19th and early 20th centuries. These locally-run public institutions were the major instrument to deal with poverty . They were intended to be "spartan and uncomfortable" as a way to convince paupers of the value of working themselves out of poverty. [12] As governments sought to relocate the poor beneficiaries outside of city centers to more rural areas, poorhouses became known as poor farms, which in effect exposed the "stigma and shame society placed on those who were unable to support themselves". [13]

Poor farms were based on the American tradition of county governments (rather than cities, townships, or state or federal governments) providing social services for the needy within their borders. Following the 1854 veto of the Bill for the Benefit of the Indigent Insane by President Franklin Pierce, the federal government did not participate in social welfare for over 70 years. In a poor-farm system, indigent people were often situated on the grounds of a farm in which able-bodied residents were required to work. A poorhouse could even be part of the same economic complex as a prison farm and other penal or charitable public institutions. Most were working farms that produced at least some of the produce, grain, and livestock they consumed. Residents were expected to provide labor to the extent that their health would allow, both in the fields and by providing housekeeping and care for other residents. Rules were strict and accommodations minimal. [14] [15]

The harsh conditions in poorhouses played a crucial part in shaping the history of organized child placements in the United States, as private organizations sought to bridge the gap in services catered to the poor, specifically children. [16] Notably, the patterns from the poorhouse system reinforced the perception that available public services are "barren and stigmatized," which promoted the idea that motivated private individuals or organizations are better suited to provide specialized care to children. [16] As such, there was a shift from poorhouses to institutions like Orphanages for childcare.

The poor farms gradually declined in the U.S. after the Social Security Act took effect in 1935, with most disappearing completely by about 1950. Since the 1970s, funding for the care, well-being and safety of the poor and indigent is now split among county, state and federal resources. Poor farms have been replaced by subsidized housing such as public housing projects, Section 8 housing, and homeless shelters.

Progressive era 1890s-1920s

Muckraking photographs by Lewis Hine of children at work mobilized public support for laws raising the minimum age for employment. Child laborer.jpg
Muckraking photographs by Lewis Hine of children at work mobilized public support for laws raising the minimum age for employment.

Progressive era reformers 1890s to 1920s reoriented the issue of poverty and its cures to combat poverty through systematic sociological research. Catalyzed by Henry George's 1873 book Progress and Poverty, public interest became concerned in how poverty could persist even in a time of economic progress Reformers rejected the outmoded laissez-faire approach and called for action through local government and private philanthropy. The rhetoric shifted from "relief" for the poor to more general "welfare" for everyone. Their rhetoric shifted the spotlight from the unemployed father to the impoverished children. [18] Reformers emphasized publicity, and had support from the newspapers and from private welfare organizations. The first round of success came with raising the Legal working age to reduce Child labor. [19] [20]

Neighborhoods in Chicago color-coded by income, published in Hull House Maps and Papers. WAGEMAP1.pdf
Neighborhoods in Chicago color-coded by income, published in Hull House Maps and Papers.

The scientific social survey began with the publication of Hull House Maps and Papers in 1895. This study included essays and maps collected by Florence Kelley and reformers working at Hull House and at the United States Bureau of Labor. Hull House focused on studying the conditions of the slums in Chicago, including four maps color-coded by nationality and income level. [21] Another social reformer, Jacob Riis, documented the living conditions of New York tenements and slums in his 1890 work How the Other Half Lives . It motivated urban reformers. [22]

By the 1920s the National Conference of Charities and Correction and the National Consumers League were enacting workmen's compensation and mothers' aid. Local governments set up Juvenile courts and dedicated social service agencies. [23] [24]

Eradicating the "germ of laziness"

Hookworm was a major disease that was widespread throughout warm, wet regions of the rural South by 1900, affecting a majority of the poor farmers. Hookworms get into the intestines and eat the best food. The loss of essential nutrition leaves the victim tired, distracted and listless. Their productivity sharply declines and that worsened their poverty. Scientific research identified the hookworm's life cycle, and dubbed it the "germ of laziness." Humans became infected through their toes by walking barefoot in areas where people often defecated. With 40% of school children already infected, grassy areas around schools that lacked outhouses were transmission points. The spread can be controlled through the use of outhouses and shoes--but those were uncommon in very poor areas. By 1910 a treatment was found: the patients drank a special chemical that loosened the hookworm's grip. Then they took a heavy dose of laxatives that washed the worms out. When most residents in a locality get treated then the spreading stops and the disease fades away locally. The Rockefeller Foundation funded state health departments which set out successfully to eradicate the disease across the South during the 1910s. [25] [26] [27]

Great Depression

A group especially vulnerable to poverty consisted of poor sharecroppers and tenant farmers in the South. These farmers consisted of around a fourth of the South's population, and over a third of these people were African Americans. [28] Historian James T. Patterson refers to these people as the "old poverty," as opposed to the "new poverty" that emerged after the onset of the Great Depression. [29]

During the Depression, the government did not provide any unemployment insurance until Social Security began in 1935, so people who lost jobs easily became impoverished. [30] People who lost their jobs or homes lived in shantytowns or Hoovervilles. Many New Deal programs were designed to increase employment and reduce poverty. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration specifically focused on creating jobs for alleviating poverty. Jobs were more expensive than direct cash payments (called "the dole"), but were psychologically more beneficial to the unemployed, who wanted any sort of job for morale. [31] Other New Deal initiatives that aimed at job creation and wellbeing included the Civilian Conservation Corps and Public Works Administration. Additionally, the institution of Social Security was one of the largest factors that helped to reduce poverty. [32]

1940 to 1960

War on poverty

A number of factors helped start the national war on poverty in the 1960s. In 1962, Michael Harrington's book The Other America helped increase public debate and awareness of the poverty issue. The war on poverty embraced expanding the federal government's roles in education and health care as poverty reduction strategies, and many of its programs were administered by the newly established Office of Economic Opportunity. The war on poverty coincided with more methodological and precise statistical versions of studying poverty; the "official" U.S. statistical measure of poverty was only adopted in 1969. [33]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Daniel Scott Smith, “Female Householding in Late Eighteenth-Century America and the Problem of Poverty.” Journal of Social History 28#1, 1994, pp. 83–107. online
  2. ↑ Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present (2009) pp.3–20, 91–92, 277.
  3. ↑ Gwendolyn Mink and Alice O'Connor, eds. Poverty in the United States: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics and Policy (2004) p.1
  4. ↑ Brenda Thompson Schoolfield, " 'For the better relief of the poor of this parish': Public poor relief in eighteenth century Charles Town, South Carolina" (2006).
  5. ↑ A. Roger Ekirch, 'Poor Carolina': Politics and Society in Colonial North Carolina, 1729-1776 (U of North Carolina Press. 2017) p. 29.
  6. ↑ "Federal Pension and Bounty-Land Acts for American Revolution". revwarapps.org. Retrieved 2020-02-27.
  7. ↑ Daniel Blackie, "Veterans, disability and society in the early United States." in Men after war (Routledge, 2013) pp.36–51.
  8. ↑ "Thomas Jefferson’s Thoughts on Lotteries, ca. 20 Jan. 1826" Founders Online (National Archives) online
  9. ↑ Zoltán Vajda, "The Greatest of All Gamblers is the Farmer." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 132.2 (2024): 75-106.
  10. ↑ Walter I. Trattner, From poor law to welfare state: A history of social welfare in America (2007) pp. 47–76.
  11. ↑ Michael B Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (1986) pp.3–35, 85–109.
  12. ↑ "Poor House (1794–1928) – Prince William Forest Park". U.S. National Park Service. Retrieved November 2, 2025.
  13. ↑ Erin Blakemore, "Poorhouses Were Designed to Punish People for Their Poverty In a time before social services, society’s most vulnerable people were hidden away in brutal institutions" Inside History (January 30, 2018) online
  14. ↑ Blakemore, 2018.
  15. ↑ Glenn C. Altschuler, and Jan M. Saltzgaber, "Clearinghouse for Paupers: The Poorfarm of Seneca County, New York, 1830-1860." Journal of Social History 17.4 (1984): 573-600. online
  16. 1 2 Katz, Elizabeth D. (2024). "Fostering Faith: Religion and Inequality in the History of Child Welfare Placements". Fordham Law Review. 92: 2088–2089. SSRN   4566892.
  17. ↑ George Dimock, “Children of the Mills: Re-Reading Lewis Hine’s Child-Labour Photographs.” Oxford Art Journal 16#2, (1993), pp. 37–54. online
  18. ↑ Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse pp.113–145.
  19. ↑ James T. Patterson, America's Struggle against Poverty: 1900–1985 (1986) pp.3–34.
  20. ↑ Sam Harrell, "Social work & corrections in the progressive era: What we remember, what we obscure." Journal of Progressive Human Services 34.1 (2023): 55-74.
  21. ↑ "Hull House Maps and Papers". florencekelley.northwestern.edu. Retrieved 2019-12-11.
  22. ↑ "Riis, Jacob". Social Welfare History Project. 2011-01-10. Retrieved 2019-12-11.
  23. ↑ Robert H Bremner, From the Depths: The Discovery of Poverty in the United States (1956) pp. 225, 255.
  24. ↑ D'Ann Campbell, "Judge Ben Lindsey and the Juvenile Court Movement, 1901-1904". Arizona and the West , 1976, 18#1, pp 5–20.
  25. ↑ Rebecca Haden, "Hookworm Eradication" Encyclopedia of Arkansas (2023) online
  26. ↑ Hoyt Bleakley, "Disease and Development: Evidence from Hookworm Eradication in the American South". Quarterly Journal of Economics (2007) 122#1 pp. 73–117 pmid=24146438 doi=10.1162/qjec.121.1.73
  27. ↑ John Ettling, The Germ of Laziness: Rockefeller Philanthropy and Public Health in the New South (Harvard UP, 1981).
  28. ↑ "Great Depression: American Social Policy". Social Welfare History Project. 2011-01-20. Retrieved 2019-12-11.
  29. ↑ Patterson, James T. (2009-06-30). America's Struggle against Poverty in the Twentieth Century. Harvard University Press. ISBN   978-0-674-04194-3.
  30. ↑ "Economics & Poverty". depts.washington.edu. Retrieved 2019-12-10.
  31. ↑ "::: Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) Photographs of King County, 1933-1935 :::". content.lib.washington.edu. Retrieved 2019-12-10.
  32. ↑ Poverty in 13 states is worse than we thought Washington Post November 8, 2013
  33. ↑ Gabe, Thomas (January 29, 2015). "Poverty in the United States: 2013" (PDF). Congressional Research Service.

Bibliography and further reading

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