(CNSNews.com) – The government is not making much headway  reducing poverty despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars,  according to a study by the libertarian Cato Institute.

Despite an unprecedented increase in federal anti-poverty spending the national poverty rate has not declined, it finds.

“[S]ince President Obama took office, federal welfare spending has  increased by 41 percent, more than $193 billion per year.” the study says.

Federal welfare spending this year now totals $668 billion, spread out over 126  programs, while the poverty rate that remains stubbornly high at nearly  15 percent – roughly where it was in 1965, when President Johnson  declared a federal War on Poverty.

While the study concedes that some of the increased spending under  Obama is a result of the recession and the counter-cyclical nature of  anti-poverty programs, it also finds that some of the increase is  deliberate, with the government having expanded eligibility for welfare  programs.

“But the dramat­ically larger increase also suggests that part of the  program’s growth is due to conscious policy choices by this  administration to ease eligibility rules and expand caseloads,” the Cato  report says. “For example, income limits for eligibility have risen  twice as fast as inflation since 2007 and are now roughly 10 percent  higher than they were when Obama took office.”

In fact, the study points out that according to the administration’s  own projections, federal welfare spending is unlikely to decline even  after the economy recovers – further evidence that not all of the  increase in spending is recession-related.

“All this spending has not bought an ap­preciable reduction in  poverty,” the study says. “[T]he poverty rate has remained relatively  constant since 1965, despite rising welfare spending.”

The study faults the way poverty programs are designed, saying that  the increase in spending and largely unchanged poverty rate showed that  the issue is not a matter of money, but a matter of what the programs  aim to achieve.

“The vast majority of current programs are focused on making poverty  more comfortable – giv­ing poor people more food, better shelter, health  care, and so forth – rather than giving people the tools that will help  them escape poverty.”

Instead, the study recommends refocusing anti-poverty efforts on  keeping people in school, discouraging out-of-wedlock births, and  encouraging people to get a job – even if that job is a low-wage one.

“It would make sense therefore to shift our anti-poverty efforts from  government programs that simply provide money or goods and services to  those who are living in poverty to efforts to create the condi­tions and  incentives that will make it eas­ier for people to escape poverty.