This year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. Since its inception, we’ve spent $22 trillion on it. Last year alone, we spent $943 billion on Federal and state welfare programs. And what do we have to show for it?

The U.S Census Bureau recently released its annual report on the poverty rate. It shows that there’s really no change: Around 14 percent of Americans are still poor.

But, if we look at the standard of living of those classified as poor by the Census Bureau, we see a very different picture than we did back in the sixties. The Heritage Foundation’s premier poverty expert, Robert Rector points out that “Census counts a family as poor if its income falls below specified thresholds. But in counting family ‘income,’ Census ignores nearly this entire $943 billion-dollar welfare state.”

According to Heritage, over 100 million people, about a third of the American population received aid from at least one of the nation’s 80 means-tested welfare programs in 2013. (This statistic does not include Social Security, Medicare or unemployment insurance)

As a result, the actual living conditions of those classified as poor have been improving for decades. Less than two percent of the poor are homeless. The typical person defined as poor lives in a home that is in good repair, not crowded, and larger than the average dwelling of a non-poor French, German or English citizen.

Robert Rector also points out that this Census-identified poor family’s home has air conditioning, cable or satellite TV, and a computer. “Forty percent have a wide screen HDTV and another 40 percent have internet access.” Three quarters have a car. About two thirds have two or more cars. Surveys by the U.S. Department of Agriculture show the poor mostly reporting they were not hungry for even a day during the prior year.

It’s good that Americans are not suffering from deprivation the way they were decades ago. But this is not because more people are providing better lives for themselves and their families. The War on Poverty was declared to increase self-sufficiency, not to create a bigger and bigger welfare state with more and more people dependent upon the government. President Johnson declared that the War on Poverty would shrink the welfare rolls. It hasn’t happened.

So, is the War on Poverty a failure because the poverty rate is virtually unchanged? Or is it a success, because poverty isn’t nearly as terrible as it was before these programs began?

It’s a failure. Its programs have discouraged work and penalized marriage. Heritage’s Robert Rector writes:  “When the War on Poverty began, seven percent of children were born outside marriage. Today 42 percent of children are.”

And children in single-parent homes are more than five times as likely to be poor. For poverty-fighting, we need more marriage and less welfare.