Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980, 10th Anniversary Edition

347 Pages·1994·11.41 MB·English

by  Charles Murray

ISBN-13: 978-0-465-04233-3
ISBN-10: 0-465-04233-3
Losing Ground

LOSING
GROUND
Am.erican Social Policy,
1950-1980
CHARLES MURRAY
B
BOOKS
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
Copyright © 1984 by Charles Murray. Introduction to the second paper
edition (tenth-anniversary edition) copyright © 1994 by Charles Murray.
Published by BasicBooks, A Member of The Perseus Books Group
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this
book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written pennis
sion except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and re
views. For information, address BasicBooks, 10 East 53rd Street, New York,
NY 10022-5299.
Designed by Vincent Torre
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Murray, Charles A.
Losing ground: American social policy, 1950-1980.
Bibliography: pp. 301-16
Includes index.
1. United States-Socia! policy-Evaluation.
2. Afro-Americans-Social conditions-Evaluation.
I. Title.
HN57.M841984
305.8'96073---dc19 83-46092
ISBN 0-465-04231-7 (cloth)
ISBN 0-465--04232-5 (paper)
ISBN 0-465-04233-3 (second edition paper)
For Paul Schwarz

CONTENTS
A NOTE ON PRESENT A nON ix
x
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION TO THE TENTH-ANNIVERSARY EDITION xiii
Prologue 3
PART I
A Generous Revolution
1. The Kennedy Transition 15
2. "The System Is to Blame" 24
3. Implementing the Elite Wisdom 41
PART II
Being POOf, Being Black: 1950-1980
4. Poverty 56
5. Employment 69
6. Wages and Occupations 85
7. Education 96
vii
Contents
8. Crime 113
9. The Family 124
10. The View from 1966 135
PART III
Interpreting the Data
11. The Social Scientists and the Great Experiment 147
12. Incentives to Fail I: Maximizing Short-Term Gains 154
13. Incentives to Fail II: Crime and Education 167
14. The Destruction of Status Rewards 178
PART IV
Rethinking Social Policy
15. What Do We Want to Accomplish? 196
16. The Constraints on Helping 205
17. Choosing a Future 219
Appendix: The Data 237
265
NOTES
299
GLOSSARY OF SOURCE ABBREVIATIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHY 301
317
INDEX
viii
A NOTE ON
PRESENT ATION
THIS BOOK tries to do two things that are not quite mutually exclusive,
but almost. It draws upon a varied and sometimes technical body of social
science data; and it addresses a general audience. How does one be fair to
the data (which often entail complications and ambiguities) and still pre
sent the material in a way that an intelligent but not obsessive reader can
be asked to follow? This tension has shaped the presentation in important
ways.
Part of the solution has been to write what amounts to a subtext in the
notes for the chapters in parts II and III. The reader who so wishes may
read the book from beginning to end without once referring to the notes
and (I trust) come away with an accurate understanding of the argument
and the evidence. But every so often the reader is also likely to stop short
and want to take a closer look. The notes, some of which amount to small
essays, have been written for such occasions.
Another part of the solution has been to rely heavily on basic trendline
data-graphs of what happened, using widely understood and accepted
measures, from 1950 to 1980. Often such data need to be supplemented
with more specialized analyses; occasionally, the trendline by itself will be
misleading. But the most straightforward data are generally also the best
ones for beginning to understand what happened.
Finally, I have added an appendix that includes much of the raw data.
It is intended for readers who want to examine the trends from other
perspectives or who want to apply these fundamental indicators to other
questions.
ix