and it s also a call to women to come together and demand change from their political leaders. be they democrat, republican, male, or female. women are 54% of the electorate and their vote has power. and they should be voting for people, as i said, men or women, that represent what they need in their lives, which is equal pay, as you said, which is sick days. that was the thing that came out in our poll the most, that people said would make the biggest difference in their life, to have sick days, where it s earned or given, that it s acceptable. and women can come together and demand change and they can get it if they do that. this week marked the anniversary of the 50th year in which lbj stood and made that declaration of the war on poverty. sergeant shriver, key to those efforts. what do you think sergeant schooifr would now say about the changing face of what inequality and poverty looks like in america? he would be talking about it,
war on poverty. between 1960 and 2012, we saw a massive decline in the poverty among the elderly, going from 35% to 14. that is a program that works. that s a set of programs that have undoubtedly, substantially decreased poverty among the elderly. and because they re untouchable, the third rail of american politics, it s going to work for them. yet many republicans came out and kept saying, the war on poverty is a failure because there are so many poor people. and that s intellectually unfair and allows a sort of heartstring pulling, oh, this is a failure, but unhooked from the reality of life. medicare is such a great example. when medicare was passed, when that bill was being considered by congress, the congress projected that in 1990, we would spend $10 ball year on medicare. we spend $110 billion on medicare in 1990. so fiscally, it was a failure. and big part of the reason why it is a failure because it subsidizes everyone. it isn t actually redirected towards low-income people
it s trying to invoke emotion from voters. and ultimately, that s the goal. like we said, you can have the best policy in the world, but if it doesn t move a heartstring, it doesn t have an impact. i wish i could say that just policy is going to move it, but, again, going back to the most successful politicians and the most successful movements are the ones that illustrate that. they paint the picture. another recent example, melissa, the immigration movement, where you have all of these young students sitting out there on the mall and saying, we are going to be one with our undocumented brothers and sisters and suffer, just as they re suffering. and suddenly the tv cameras focused in on this and the american public started seeing this. and so this is key to any political strategy. so, it may lack substance, but our job is to see that substance is added on. but part of what happened is the discourse can sometimes be unhooked from something. the you actually look at lbj s
support, for example, single mothers, the american families, the way they are today. i don t think shaming anybody gets us anywhere. it s really courageous for people to tell their story and i think people, when day do, will find that somebody will say, that s me too. one last question for you. as much as the report shows a lot of inequality, it also has an empowerment feeling behind it. talk about the ten steps that the report suggests about how we start to move, both as individuals and as a nation towards more equality. well, the report that you can download as a set, it s big and it s thick, so we pulled out ten things anyone can do. one is to read the report and cite it. we have it in classrooms all over the country. we re hoping political leaders will use it to craft legislation. but we re also calling on young girls to stay in school, because that s a huge income predictor, whether you re going to be in poverty or not. we re telling them to be providers is and not think they
so we re going to go tonight findings of a shriver report. a woman s nation pushes back from the brink. this comprehensive investigation from nbc news anchor maria shriver in partnership with the center for american progress brings to the forefront the lives of millions of america s most vulnerable women, including the unmarried women who account for 40% of all births. that s more than 50% of women under the age of 30. among the reports findings about single mothers, nearly three quarters of unmarried births are to women who are living in poverty or on the brink of poverty. and even though 58% of the births to unmarried women to unmarried women were to women who are cohabitating with a partner at time of birth. and according to reports, two-thirds of single mothers are working low-wage jobs with little flexibility, benefits, or economic supports that allow for time with their children. 96% of them say paid leave is the workplace policy that would help them the most, and nearly two-t