John Fund writes today about this conference at Grove City College. Bottom line: anti-poverty programs that are tailored to individual local circumstances and challenge people to take responsibility for changing their lives are more effective than programs that simply offer people a hand-out. Shocking, isn’t it?

Even after the 1996 welfare reform bill (very successful in helping folks off the welfare rolls) and more than four years of admittedly sporadic Bush Administration efforts to change the way we think and act about poverty, Fund can still write this paragraph:

All told, there are more than 80 federal benefit programs. Like the pre-1996 AFDC program, nearly all have no limits on how long someone can remain on them. All of these programs do good, especially in keeping people fed and housed. But the impersonal government dole does nothing to cure the poverty of the soul that keeps so many mired in self-destructive behavior.

Read the whole thing.