Fighting Poverty
See also: War on poverty and Welfare's effect on povertyThere have been many governmental and nongovernmental efforts to reduce poverty and its effects. These range in scope from neighborhood efforts to campaigns with a national focus. They target specific groups affected by poverty such as children, people who are autistic, immigrants, or people who are homeless. Efforts to alleviate poverty use a disparate set of methods, such as advocacy, education, social work, legislation, direct service or charity, and community organizing.
Recent debates have centered on the need for policies that focus on both "income poverty" and "asset poverty." Advocates for the approach argue that traditional governmental poverty policies focus solely on supplementing the income of the poor, through programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and Food Stamps.
Additionally, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC or EIC) is a credit for people who earn low-to-moderate incomes. This credit can reduce the taxes of working families and individuals, allowing them to keep more of what they earn. The Earned Income Tax Credit is viewed as the largest poverty reduction program in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Poverty In The United States
Famous quotes containing the words fighting and/or poverty:
“One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied ... but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)