U.S. lawmakers were not always indifferent to the vast number of U.S. children living in poverty. Head Start, the largest and most impactful piece of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, aimed to address exactly this problem. And though underfunded since the 1970s, decades of research prove that Head Start has had meaningful and lasting impacts for the children and families that participate—including increased high school and college completion rates and increased “economic independence.”
The evidence from Head Start and from the Child Tax Credit point to an important lesson: child poverty can be addressed—if we take steps to reduce it through policy.
Sargent Shriver, who directed the Office of Economic Opportunity in Johnson’s Administration, developed the idea for Head Start when he learned in the early 1960s that half of America’s poor were children. Looking for ways to counter political resistance to his antipoverty programs for adults, Shriver seized on the idea to transfer unused funds to a program that could give a “head start” to pre-school aged children. Shriver believed an antipoverty project for young children would be both effective policy and politics. Who could argue that a 4-year-old deserved to live in poverty?
Shriver was right. Project Head Start gained broad bipartisan support when it began in the summer of 1965. A planning committee of experts proposed Head Start should be a comprehensive child development program. It would provide not only age-appropriate education, but also health, dental, social-emotional screenings, and nutritious meals. Critically, the committee also agreed that parent and community engagement was crucial to both the program’s and the children’s success.
Armed with a popular idea, Johnson and Shriver ignored the committee’s recommendations to roll out slowly with one or two pilot programs. Seasoned politicians, Johnson and Shriver knew to ride political momentum and get programs off the ground across the country quickly. Relying on the volunteer work of the First Lady, the wives of Congressmen and cabinet members, and federal agency interns, the Johnson administration was able to get Project Head Start operating in over 3,000 of the nation’s poorest communities in just 12 weeks, earning it the nickname “Project Rush-Rush.”
Shriver believed that community investment would increase the success of the programs and buffer Head Start from eventual political headwinds. Johnson Administration volunteers traveled to poor counties, reached out to the local leaders of community action organizations, and supported them through the federal grant application process. Civil rights leader Whitney White Jr. published op-eds in Black newspapers encouraging community leaders to support the program, claiming it would “rain a torrent of educational vitamins” on children living in poverty.