Government programs such as food stamps and unemployment insurance have made significant progress in easing the plight of the poor in the half-century since the launch of the war on poverty, according to a major new study.

But the nation's economy has made far less progress lifting people out of poverty without the need for government services.

The findings by a group of academic researchers at Columbia University paint a mixed picture of the United States nearly 50 years after President Lyndon B. Johnson announced in his January 1964 State of the Union address that he would wage a war on poverty. They also contradict the official poverty rate, which suggests there has been no decline in the percentage of Americans experiencing poverty since then.