Lyndon B Johnson War On Poverty Essay

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Lyndon B. Johnson declared the war on poverty during a Union address in January 8th, 1964. This was in response to national poverty rates being around 19 percent at the time of his speech. Lyndon B. Johnson’s success in lowering poverty rates during the “war on poverty,” was due to legislations such as VISTA, Job Corps, Head Start, Medicaid, Medicare, and HUD. One major Legislation is VISTA. VISTA stands for Volunteers In Service To America. VISTA’S purpose was to provide an education and job training for underprivileged people. VISTA employs low income people from around the US and is still around today. To sum it all up VISTA was basically the domestic version of the Peace corps(helps 3rd world countries around the world). It was successful in helping poor people find jobs. Johnson was a former teacher, so he knew the impact a good education can have on people's life. But some children had parents who were not able to prepare them for school. So he formed Head Start. The main goal of Head Start was to raise the IQ of children before they went to school. This was successful in raising the iq of children and most of the children in the program had better grades in school. Which helped children go to high school, go to college, and get better jobs. …show more content…

Job Corps was a group of educational and training programs. It was designed to provide young people living in poverty with a chance to have job training, earn a High School Diploma or GED, and find and keep a good job. The Job Corps made it easier for poor people to find a job because more business owners would hire people with an education over people without one. HUD, or Housing and Urban Development operated to provide housing assistance to low income families and individuals. It also bans housing discrimination based on sex, race, nationality, and religion. This helped families not have to worry so much about bills so they can get the stuff they