Christian Science Monitor: on Social Security

Lyndon Johnson: War on Poverty result: Senior poverty down by all measures

Yet child poverty has hardly budged in the Census data. The poverty rate was actually higher in 2012 for people high school age or younger (at 21.8%) than in 1966 (when the rate was 17.6%).

Those raw numbers may belie the progress that's been made. The introduction of food stamps, arriving nationally during the 1970s, helped to drive down rates of severe malnutrition among children. Although poverty remained, by the late 1970s severe child malnutrition and related health conditions were rare.