Losing Ground (book)

Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980

Cover of the first edition
Author	Charles Murray
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	Welfare state
Published	November 1984 (hardback) January 1994 (paperback)
Media type	Print
ISBN	978-0465065882

Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 is a 1984 book by political scientist Charles Murray about the effectiveness of welfare state policies in the United States between 1950 and 1980.^[1] It has been listed as one of the most influential books on policy and social science in the United States in the 20th century. It has created controversy because of its policy proposals.^[2][3][4]

Background

Murray wrote the book while a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, then under the aegis of Irving Kristol. The Manhattan Institute funded his work on the book and also promoted it.^[5] Joan Kennedy Taylor of the Manhattan Institute is credited with having played a crucial role in helping the book see the light of day.^[6]

Summary

Murray's main thesis is that social welfare programs, as they have historically been implemented in the United States, tend to increase poverty rather than eliminate it by creating incentives that reward short-sighted behavior that is not conducive to escaping poverty in the long term.^[2][3][4][7]

Reception

Book reviews

Christopher Jencks wrote a detailed review of the book in the May 9, 1985 issue of the New York Review of Books.^[8] Murray responded to Jencks' critique, to which Jencks responded.^[9]

The Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison published a special report with the views of poverty researchers affiliated with the Institute on Murray's claims. A short 12-page summary was also published in their Focus magazine.^[10]

Later discussion

In 1985, a few months after the book's release, the New York Times called it a budget-cutter's bible, while also writing that the book's "proposition may be as deeply flawed as it is startling, unlikely to survive scrutiny."^[7]

In a December 1993 interview with NBC News, then US President Bill Clinton wrote of Murray and Losing Ground: "He did the country a great service. I mean, he and I have often disagreed, but I think his analysis is essentially right. ... There's no question that it would work. But the question is ... Is it morally right?"^[11]

In 2006, an article by Michael Barone for the US News & World Report wrote of the book: "It undermined the case that welfare was a moral obligation by showing that welfare created a moral disaster. It got people thinking that there must be another way. It inspired policy experimentation, which spawned political imitation. First in the states, and then nationally, welfare reform became one of the public policy successes of the 1990s."^[12]

In March 2012, in a discussion between Arnold Kling, Bryan Caplan, Megan McArdle, Brink Lindsey, Reihan Salam, and Ross Douthat about Murray's more recent book Coming Apart, Lindsey raised the point that Murray's three books on poverty in America laid out three competing theses for the causes: social welfare policies (Losing Ground), cognitive ability and class stratification based on cognitive ability (The Bell Curve), and class stratification with insufficient attention paid to moral virtues and values.^[13] Economist Bryan Caplan wrote a blog post proposing a reconciliation of the three theses.^[14]

In his 2009 book Prisons of Poverty, sociologist Loïc Wacquant criticises the book for "misinterpreting" data to "demonstrate" that rising poverty levels after the 1960s were caused by the emergence of the social welfare state.^[15]

References