Through the “Great Society”, Johnson introduced the Food Stamp Act of 1964. “As a permanent program, the food stamp plan will be one of our most valuable weapons for the war on poverty.” Johnson stated. The program was aimed to enable American families to more readily obtain food and “increase their food expenditures, using their own dollars.” This “nutritional program” also sought to alleviate many health issues associated with lack of malnourishment. The introduction of the Food Stamp Act alleviated poverty, poverty in terms of lack of proper nourishment, as it provided more poor families with a better way of living through the availability of food. According to Johnson in the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, the Food for Peace program allows the sharing of “17% more of our food with other peoples than in 1960. Our food abundance is being used constructively not only to combat hunger but also to help other nations to control inflation, generate funds for financing development projects, and to help provide lunches for some 40 million school children throughout the developing world.” The program was evidently not only successful on a domestic level however nationwide as it benefitted other nations. The program was so successful that it became a permanent program which still exists in the American society to date however was …show more content…
The purpose of this act was to provide health insurance through two programs: Medicare and Medicaid. Medicaid provides health insurance for poor Americans, and Medicare provides insurance for Americans over 65 years old. A lack of health insurance was common in the 1960s among seniors, however now a great majority of seniors are properly, fully insured. According to a study published in “the journal Health Affairs,…the health of the elderly population has improved, as measured by both longevity and functional status” The study continued to say that the “life expectancy at age 65 increased from 14.3 years in 1960 to 17.8 years in 1998 and the chronically disabled elderly population declined from 24.9 percent in 1982 to 21.3 percent in 1994.” “Medicaid recipients are generally poorer and sicker than the general population.”, however the introduction of the program had been beneficial. Medicare was “ among the most successful federal programs ever devised. The quality of life for older Americans has been raised astronomically…” The great success of these health insurance programs highlight that Johnson’s Great Society aided in the alleviation of poverty in the 1960s as it bettered living