Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth [Paperback]

Claude S. Fischer (Author), Michael Hout (Author), Martín Sánchez Jankowski (Author), Samuel R. Lucas (Author), Ann Swidler (Author), Kim Voss (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 8, 1996 | ISBN-10: 0691028982 | ISBN-13: 978-0691028989 | Edition: 1st

As debate rages over the widening and destructive gap between the rich and the rest of Americans, Claude Fischer and his colleagues present a comprehensive new treatment of inequality in America. They challenge arguments that expanding inequality is the natural, perhaps necessary, accompaniment of economic growth. They refute the claims of the incendiary bestseller The Bell Curve (1994) through a clear, rigorous re-analysis of the very data its authors, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, used to contend that inherited differences in intelligence explain inequality. Inequality by Design offers a powerful alternative explanation, stressing that economic fortune depends more on social circumstances than on IQ, which is itself a product of society. More critical yet, patterns of inequality must be explained by looking beyond the attributes of individuals to the structure of society. Social policies set the "rules of the game" within which individual abilities and efforts matter. And recent policies have, on the whole, widened the gap between the rich and the rest of Americans since the 1970s.

Not only does the wealth of individuals' parents shape their chances for a good life, so do national policies ranging from labor laws to investments in education to tax deductions. The authors explore the ways that America--the most economically unequal society in the industrialized world--unevenly distributes rewards through regulation of the market, taxes, and government spending. It attacks the myth that inequality fosters economic growth, that reducing economic inequality requires enormous welfare expenditures, and that there is little we can do to alter the extent of inequality. It also attacks the injurious myth of innate racial inequality, presenting powerful evidence that racial differences in achievement are the consequences, not the causes, of social inequality. By refusing to blame inequality on an unchangeable human nature and an inexorable market--an excuse that leads to resignation and passivity--Inequality by Design shows how we can advance policies that widen opportunity for all.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Following in the footsteps of the critical The Bell Curve Wars (LJ 4/15/94) and Measured Lies (LJ 6/1/96), Fischer and his fellow members of the Sociology Department at the University of California, Berkeley, have collaborated to produce a clear and persuasive counter argument to the conclusions of Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein in The Bell Curve (Free Pr., 1994) that racially related I.Q. scores are the determining factors for explaining the differing economic, social, and intellectual success levels of Americans. Fischer et al. first question the validity of Murray and Herrnstein's statistical results. Then "using history, geography, and economics, [they] show" that such inequalities are rooted in environmental background and circumstances, not the obverse, and that these are shaped by social policy and structure. The authors urge that Americans not scapegoat race but look critically at policy and at a design for society to narrow the gaps between the least and most encouraged in our country. Recommended for academic and lay readers.?Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Alfred
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Inequality by Design's most important findings describe an America deeply stratified by class, an America in which equal opportunity remains only and idle dream...[It] may well after the public discussion...with a shot across the bow of the nation's policymakers. -- Lingua Franca

. . . calmly but devastatingly refutes the view that IQ is the inexorable force behind growing inequality in American society. [This] message deserves wide airing, lest voters and policy makers believe the fatalistic--and false--message that our destiny lies in our genes. . . . The fact that IQ isn't destiny means Americans can't wash their hands of poverty and related social problems by imagining them to be timeless and unchangeable. -- Jonathan Marshall, San Francisco Chronicle

A clear and persuasive counter argument to the conclusions of Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein in The Bell Curve. . . . The authors urge that Americans not scapegoat race but look critically at policy and at a design for society to narrow the gaps between the least and most encouraged in our country. -- Library Journal

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Product Details

• Paperback: 324 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; 1st edition (July 8, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691028982
• ISBN-13: 978-0691028989
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #546,737 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Claude S. Fischer is a Sociology Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He started at Berkeley in 1972 with an undergraduate degree from UCLA and a Ph.D. from Harvard. Most of his early research focused on the social psychology of urban life--how and why rural and urban experiences differ--and on social networks, both topics coming together in "To Dwell Among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City" (1982). In recent years, he has worked on American social history, beginning with a study of the early telephone's place in social life, "America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940" (1992). Along the way, Fischer has worked on other topics, including writing a book on inequality with five Berkeley colleagues, "Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth"(1996). Fischer was also the founding editor of "Contexts," the American Sociological Association's magazine for the general reader, and its executive editor through 2004.

In 2006, Fischer co-authored a social historical book with Michael Hout, "Century of Difference: How America Changed in the Last One Hundred Years" (Russell Sage), which describes the shrinking of old divisions and the widening of new ones among Americans over the twentieth century. In 2010, he published "Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character" (University of Chicago Press), which analyzes social and cultural change since the colonial era. And in 2011, he published "Still Connected: Family and Friends in America Since 1970"(Russell Sage), a study, using compilations of survey data, of whether and how Americans' personal ties have changed in the last generation.

Among his awards and honors, Fischer was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Fischer has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in urban sociology, research methods, personality and social structure, and American society, and seminars on topics ranging from professional writing to the sociology of consumption.

1972 Ph.D., Sociology, Harvard University 1970
M.A., Sociology, Harvard University
1968 B.A., Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Easy-to-read, yet academic, critique of The Bell Curve, August 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Inequality by Design (Hardcover)

The numerous authors of this tome do a fine job in their criticism of Herrnstein and Murray. They discuss where those authors were correct, where they twisted stastics to meet their own goals, where they made false assumptions and where they committed bad science. This book doesn't get much into the genetic end of things, but rather discusses other causes of inequality and the flaws in the research of The Bell Curve. Recommended for anyone who wants a serious, scholarly, critique of pop science.

30 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent, thorough, accessible critique of The Bell Curv, December 3, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth (Paperback)

Fischer et al. launch a reasoned yet devastating critique on methodological grounds of Herrnstein & Murray's infamous _The Bell Curve._ The first half of the book details technical errors and ommissions from TBC, offering three distinct arguments against Herrnstein & Murray's basic claims, all using the same data they used in _The Bell Curve._ Then the second half of the book offers a substantive proposal for understanding income and wealth inequality in the United States, rooted in the same data Herrnstein & Murray used. Highly recommended.

6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Exposing the Bell Curve hoax, February 7, 2009

By 

Ashtar Command "Seeker" (Stockholm, Sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth (Paperback)

"Inequality by design" is written by six sociologists based at the University of California, Berkeley. It exposes Richard Herrnstein's and Charles Murray's notorious "The Bell Curve", a bestselling book published in 1994 which argues that social inequality is based on hereditary intelligence and therefore inevitable. "The Bell Curve" also claims that Blacks and Hispanics are on average more stupid than Whites and East Asians. That such a screed could become a bestseller, apparently selling hundreds of thousands of copies, may say something about contemporary America.

When I first heard about Herrnstein's and Murray's book, I assumed that IQ tests are legitimate, and that the distortion of "The Bell Curve" was simply that the book claimed that IQ was hereditary rather than learned. "Inequality by design" shows that the rabbit hole goes deeper, much deeper. It turns out that "The Bell Curve" is more or less a hoax, and so is the entire "science" of psychometrics it's based on!

In an unguarded moment, Herrnstein and Murray admits that their measure of IQ only explains "less than ten percent and often less than five percent" of the differences in life outcome of the test takers. (Read that again, slowly.) In other words, more than 90% of the differences in life outcomes are *not* explained by the AFQT, the test used in "The Bell Curve" to measure intelligence! Their entire case is therefore bogus. Herrnstein and Murray created a mountain out of a molehill. Further, it turns out that the bell curve itself is an artificial construct. Psychometricians simply assume that the distribution of intelligence in a population is shaped as a bell curve. In reality, the individual test scores on the AFQT don't look like a bell curve - a substantial proportion of the test-takers answered all or most questions correctly. Indeed, 20% of White respondents got all answers right, but on the bell curve, only 5% are counted as "the cognitive elite". It also turns out that the very definition of IQ is problematic. IQ is simply what IQ tests measure - thus, a circular definition. Ironically, if IQ is defined in this way, it's impossible to explain why IQ scores have risen substantially after World War II, too short a period for genetic changes to take place (remember that Herrnstein and Murray believe IQ to be in large part heritable).

"Inequality by design" also reveals what kind of questions the AFQT really includes. (The AFQT is a test administered by the US army to applicants.) The questions turn out to be high school level math and English questions, in other words, questions that measure how well the applicant has mastered a certain kind of curriculum. They don't really measure general intelligence. Of course, Herrnstein and Murray believe that how well somebody does in school is itself a product of hereditary intelligence. But that argument works only if everyone taking the AFQT has been exposed to the same curriculum in schools of the same quality, which is hardly likely. Indeed, older test subjects tend to score lower than younger ones, which is incomprehensible on the heredity view, but compatible with the idea that the AFQT simply measures exposure to high school education. The older test subjects have started to forget what they were taught in high school. There are other curious anomalies in the AFQT, for instance test-takers who didn't respond to any (!) of the questions correctly, or test-takers that were obviously mentally retarded. Also, the scores tend to get lower on the subtests administered later, naturally enough, since the applicants would have been tired by then, and a higher percentage would simply drop out. Whatever the Armed Forces Qualifying Test measures, it's obviously not "intelligence".

In the chapter on race, the authors point out that IQ scores (and/or school results) are always lower for discriminated groups than for groups with superior social status. This is true globally, even when the different groups are of the same "race". For instance, Koreans in Japan score far below average on school tests, naturally enough, since they are a discriminated underclass group. In the US, by contrast, Koreans score about the same as the Japanese (above the White average). Also, Burakumin in Japan have lower test results than Japanese, despite the fact that the Burakumin *are* Japanese. They are descendants of an out-cast group in feudal Japan, and are still discriminated against in many areas. International comparisons also show that when discrimination becomes less widespread, the IQ of the formerly out-cast groups rises very quickly. A good example are the Jews in the United States. Thus, social rather than genetic factors are behind the seemingly damning differences in IQ between different "races". (Leaving aside for the moment that there is no such thing as "race" anyway.) Incidentally, while average Black IQ scores are lower than White ones, Black IQ has nevertheless been steadily rising since World War II, obviously because of the rise of a Black middle class, and obviously not because of widespread intermarriage with Whites!

Other chapters in "Inequality by design" deal with the real causes of inequality, how improving the social environment can boost intelligence, and an alternative analysis of the AFQT.

In my opinion, the book is a good and relatively non-technical introduction to its subject, suited for the general reader.

"The Bell Curve" is a monumental hoax. This book proves it.