Very few matters of public policy are as important as, and yet still consume as little political thought as anti-poverty policy. The political landscape is changing—Clinton declared in her campaign kickoff speech that “success isn’t measured by how much the wealthiest Americans have, but by how many children climb out of poverty”—but for the most part, such proclamations are candidates’ attempts to burnish their populist credentials, Hillary Clinton included. The deck is stacked against the (rapidly shrinking) middle class, as progressives such as Senator Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren remind us, but little has been said from any candidate that amounts to a fresh approach in helping communities mired in cyclical poverty. 

Perhaps this is because political candidates are loath to publicly ponder the question of who bears the ultimate responsibility for the persistence of poverty in America. The fact that more than one in five children in America is born into poverty may be appalling, but that has been the reality for so long that the American electorate seems oddly desensitized to it. 

Candidates’ refusal to challenge the orthodoxy on this matter makes basic political sense, considing that 44% of Americans are more “likely to blame poverty on circumstances beyond people’s control than they are to believe the poor aren’t doing enough to dig themselves out of it,” at least according to a 2014 poll conducted by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal. 

Denying the electorate a robust debate on this topic is denying all Americans an important public service. This is because public perceptions —and misconceptions—of those in poverty have made their way into the fabric of federal antipoverty policy, to the point where stereotypes of the poor have become statistical self-fulfilling prophecies.

 One such case of this is the 1996 welfare reform bill (the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996), authored by now-Ohio governor John Kasich, currently a GOP candidate for president, and signed into law by Bill Clinton, whose wife is the prohibitive favorite for the Democratic nomination. According to Mimi Abramovitz, acclaimed author and social worker, racist and sexist stereotypes of ‘welfare queens’ (a.k.a. black mothers on welfare) were heard not only on television and talk radio but also on the floor of the United States Congress during the debate over welfare reform. Such stereotypes became woven into federal antipoverty policy. In a 2006 article titled “The Compassion Gap in American Poverty Policy,” Fred Block, professor at the University of California, Davis, wrote in the journal Contexts that welfare critics “insist that immorality is the root cause of poverty...but when assistance becomes inadequate, the poor can no longer survive by obeying the rules; they are forced to break them.” 

 The origins of such stereotypes are well known. In the thirteen colonies, where Puritan-Protestant beliefs dominated everyday life, economic success as a result of hard work was deemed as a sign of God’s blessing. But what of those who were less fortunate? Nathan Scovronick, an associate dean at Princeton University, completes the logical puzzle: “I am an American,” he writes, “So I have the freedom and opportunity to make whatever I want of my life. I can succeed by working hard and using my talents; if I fail, it will be my own fault.” 

This attitude is embedded into federal antipoverty policy, especially where it comes to eligibility for government assistance; the 1996 welfare reform bill tightened eligibility for welfare on the premise that the ills of our society are caused and perpetuated by the unmitigated sexuality of poor unmarried women. And although not an explicitly discriminatory piece of legislation, the implementation of welfare reform following 1996 disproportionately affected members of minority communities. Current policy has failed as a moral calculus—it implies a Catch-22 for those in poverty—and as an economic calculus, for since the economic downturn in 2008 those formerly covered by federal welfare have been hit even harder. But, apparently, it is successful as a political calculus, because this is still the way we talk. 

The website OnTheIssues.org documents candidates’ statements about all number of topics, including poverty and welfare. Not a single major candidate for president, save Bernie Sanders, has admitted, as he has, that “beating up on the poor is now good politics.” The other Democrats at least have been more supportive of programs that actually do help those in poverty, like increasing regulations on predatory banks, supporting universal pre-kindergarten education nationally, and demystifying the consumer’s role in our nation’s financial system. That isn’t to say no Republican supports any of these ideas, but by and large, Democrats have a much better track record of doing so. 

But almost every GOP candidate, it seems, feels obliged to chastise “government dependency” in some way, in favor of “personal responsibility.” The one exception to this is John Kasich, who, in defending his decision to expand Medicaid [under Obamacare] in the state of Ohio, said in 2013, “When I get to the pearly gates, I’m going to have an answer for what I’ve done for the poor.” But this was not received well by his fellow GOP governors: Nikki Haley, governor of South Carolina, went so far as to suggest he was “hiding behind Jesus” in defense of his move. 

No one should deny that, often,  personal choices lead to or exacerbate poverty, but when policies aimed at “reducing dependency” have been an abject failure in reducing poverty in the U.S., perhaps it’s time not only for a different approach but a different discussion entirely. 

Certainly, some individuals have been prophetic in calling for a different way of discussing antipoverty policy, among them Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times. He said, in November 2013, that “compassion is not a sign of weakness—it is a mark of civilization.” American voters in both parties should follow his example and demand of their candidates for president a detailed, sensitive and nuanced debate about poverty in America today. 

The fact of the matter is that, according to a 2013 study from the Pew Charitable Trust, 70 percent of Americans born into poverty remain there for their entire lives. The American Dream implies equality of opportunity, but each and every American is only afforded that opportunity if the proper policies are in place to guarantee it.