It has now been 50 years since President Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty.
There is a popular perception that President Johnson's War on Poverty failed. Critics point to the official poverty rate and say it has scarcely budged from 1964 to 2014, despite the $15 trillion spent in those 50 years.
But a University of Michigan economist is challenging that view. She is co-author of a new paper that analyzes spending during the Johnson Administration, and she believes it is wrong to call the War on Poverty a failure.
Martha Bailey joined us today.
Listen to the full interview above.
