Critics of conservative politics and rampant materialism during the 1980s pointed to what they perceived as a growing disparity between social classes during the decade. The rich were getting richer, they noted, but the poor were getting poorer. In 1989 Life highlighted those at the bottom of the economic spectrum in a heartrending story about children growing up in poverty. Focusing on the residents of a dilapidated building in Portsmouth, a city in south-central Ohio in one of the poorest of the state's counties, the story and accompanying photographs used the wide-eyed, bleak stares of poor children and their stunted dreams to dramatize the fact that 13 million children, one in five, were living in poverty in the United States — the highest number and percentage since the 1960s, when President Lyndon Johnson launched his War on Poverty. While many citizens of Portsmouth were indignant...