War Against Poverty In Michael Harrington's The Other America

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In 1960, 40 million people of the American population were considered to be living in poverty out of the 176 million citizens in the United States. This staggering number was one of the facts that Michael Harrington revealed in his book The Other America (Meyerson). The book The Other America by Michael Harrington was significant in American History because it changed American society by exposing the amount of people in poverty in America and depicted their their lives in the poor urban ghettos to the middle and upper classes of society. The book made the impoverished Americans visible to the upper classes in American society and was attributed to dropping the poverty rate in America as the novel influenced Lyndon Johnson’s “War against Poverty.” In context, American college students were challenging the old ideas of how to make money. They protested against consumerism, materialism, and mania. They challenged the old ways of thinking about sex, marriage, and drugs. In their eyes, students believed they were creating a new America…show more content…
This led to a dramatic fall in the poverty rate of the United States. There was a dramatic fall in the poverty rate when Johnson first announced the War on Poverty in 1964. This is because he followed his announcement by creating Medicaid, Medicare, greater federal housing spending, and other programs to fight the increasing poverty rate. In 1964, the poverty rate was estimated to be 19 percent; ten years later, it dropped to 11.2 percent (Matthews). This shows that with the commencement of the War against Poverty, the United States was slowly improving the lives of American citizens. The novel The Other America by Michael Harrington was significant during the 1960’s because it revealed the existence of an impoverished class in the United States that had gone unseen for years. It had also influenced the War on Poverty that drastically dropped the poverty rate in the

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