Event

Conference Website & Registration

Penn Sociology's Dorothy Roberts will be speaking at this conference sponsored by the Penn School of Social Policy and Practice, Urban Studies at Penn, the Penn Department of History, and Penn Institute for Urban Research.

From the Social Science & Policy Forum Website:

"AS HISTORIAN MICHAEL KATZ (who passed away on August 23) noted in a new edition of his classic, The Undeserving Poor, “poverty is deeply rooted” in American life. “Before the twentieth century, the nation lacked both the economic surplus and policy tools to eradicate it.” With the inception of the War on Poverty fifty years ago, however, economic abundance and new methods of providing social services joined together to confront poverty and, “for about a decade, this combination, backed by popular support and political will, did spectacularly well.” Since then, “poverty has been allowed to grow again.”

Honoring and critically appraising his work in its first roundtable session, the Penn SSPF fall conference, “The War on Poverty at 50: Its History and Legacy,” will bring together leading scholars and policy analysts to examine the key questions Katz raises. What worked and what did not in the War on Poverty? Were its successes and failures the outcome of methods or of political will? Where did the political will to declare such a war come from? And in twenty-first century America, can it ever be regained?"