Abstract
Ghetto poverty is still the problem of 7 million of people, among the 30 million poor in the United States. It is a pressing issue, above all when we take into account media coverage that is given to these areas of social and spatial segregation. A mistake would be to consider only Black ghetto neighborhoods, when it also concerns the Latinos. The rise of the Latino minority, which is forecasted to triple from 2000 to 2050, could also potentially increase the number of individuals living in ghetto poverty areas. The current crisis and the consequences of the unprecedented recession may also worsen this picture and necessitate strong emergency welfare measures for the ghetto inhabitants. There is already a risk that the public powers may be compelled to stress on helping the ghetto inhabitants to survive, more than helping them to get out of the ghetto, on a long term basis. I will however try to analyze what can be learned from past economic measures to cope with ghetto poverty. First, I will take an inventory of the main difficulties and drawbacks of politics that were launched during the War on poverty, to understand to which extent it can help us today. It is actually very important to have a look at the past decades to build more efficient policies for the future and avoid repeating the same mistakes.
