Friar Bijou wrote:
I also enjoy the part where the 1st chart shows poverty goes UP right after we get GOP presidents.
Every single time nice Nixon.
Every single time nice Nixon.
But those aren't the only times it goes up, right? One of the sharpest increases was in the late 70s, which continued until about 83, which corresponds best with Reagan getting his economic platform in place and operating. Your claim kinda correlates with Bush 41's term starting and then going up about when Clinton's starts. But then the next poverty increase occurs prior to Bush 43 taking office, once again reversing (slightly) about the middle of his terms, then going up again at the very end of his terms due to the whole housing bubble thing. And even your Nixon comment is wrong, since the general poverty trend is downward between 68 and 72, and then goes back up during the Ford and especially the Carter administrations.
There are as many change points that don't match up with any specific party holding the White House as do, so I'm not sure you can make such a correlation at all. Actually, the only portion that follows your claim is the whole Bush 41 to Clinton time period. And even then, only somewhat.
There's a lot more elements to this. It's not like when a president of one party takes office, all the policies and programs already existing and in effect just magically disappear or change. I mean, I guess if you're going for a cheap "funny" for folks already inclined to believe it, it works, but the data doesn't actually support what you're saying, and frankly, it's kind of absurd to think it would.
Another way to look at the data is to examine when there are longish downward trends in poverty rather than upward ticks. And those occur two times. Once between about 83 and 88, and the other between about 93 and 99. In one of those cases, we had a Republican president, and the other a Democrat. So no correlation there. Interestingly enough, we had a GOP president and DEM congress during one period, and the reverse during the other. But we had split governments at other points as well, and didn't see such a trend. So... Um... Really no correlation in terms of who is in office and where here. What we can say however, is that the two sharp upward trends both occurred when we had Democratic controlled congresses. Once with a Dem in office, and the other with a GOP in office. Again though, that's not enough data points to make any more than the most weak correlation.
The bigger picture IMO, is the myth that Johnson's "war on poverty" was in any way the cause of a sustained reduction in real poverty rates. The data just doesn't support that claim at all. The specific fluxuations after that point aren't really significant. It still remains within a 4% range for the entire timeline past that point (although I'll point out that this chart doesn't include most of Obama's time in office), after previously dropping significantly (10% over less than 10 years). And the one clear demarcation at the point at which our poverty rate leveled off was Johnson's administration.