The War on Poverty, instituted in 1965 during the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, was one of the chief elements of that president’s Great Society initiative. This book describes and assesses the major social science research effort that grew up with, and in part because of, these programs. Robert H. Haveman’s objective is to illuminate the process by which social and political developments have an impact on the direction of progress in the social sciences.
Haveman identifies the policy measures most closely tied to the War on Poverty and the Great Society and describes the nature of these policies and their growth from 1965 to 1980. He examines the extent and growth of resources devoted to the poverty-related research that accompanied these programs, and assesses the impact of the growth in this research commitment over the 1965-1980 period.
Haveman’s was the first full overview of recent poverty-related research and an overview of methodological developments in the social sciences in the post-1965 period which were stimulated by the antipoverty effort.