Why Eradicating Urban Poverty Requires a Long Term Multi-Program 'War': A Review of Anti-Poverty Strategies for the Needs of the Late 70s

Abstract . Identifying who are the urban poor may help determine why poverty exists in our cities; and, of course, knowing why people are poor is a prerequisite for designing effective policies to eradicate the problem. As the statistics presented in this paper demonstrate, poverty has many causes and, therefore, a successful ‘war’ on poverty will necessarily have to be long term and multi-programmed. One essential part of that ‘war,’ of course, will be an attack on racial and sexual discrimination in labor markets; but, as this paper's analysis of the possible underlying causes of such discrimination points out, economic progress alone may be insufficient—racial and sexual prejudice itself will have to be eradicated.