This classic book serves as a starting point for any serious discussion of welfare reform. Losing Ground argues that the ambitious social programs of the1960s and 1970s actually made matters worse for its supposed beneficiaries, the poor and minorities. Charles Murray startled readers by recommending that we abolish welfare reform, but his position launched a debate culminating in President Clinton’s proposal “to end welfare as we know it.”
Losing Ground
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Murray, coauthor of The Bell Curve, argued that the social programs of the '60s and the '70s worsened the plight of the poor and minorities. This 10th anniversary issue includes a new introduction by the author.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
''A great book.'' --Wall Street Journal
''Without bile and without rhetoric it lays out a stark truth that must be faced.'' --Business Week
''A remarkable book. Future discussions of social policy cannot proceed without taking the arguments and evidence of this book into account.'' --James S. Coleman, University of Chicago
''Charles Murray will infuriate people. But if they read carefully he will also make them think.'' --Ken Auletta, New York Times bestselling author
''A remarkable book. Future discussions of social policy cannot proceed without taking the arguments and evidence of this book into account.'' --James S. Coleman, University of Chicago
''Charles Murray will infuriate people. But if they read carefully he will also make them think.'' --Ken Auletta, New York Times bestselling author --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.
''Without bile and without rhetoric it lays out a stark truth that must be faced.'' --Business Week
''A remarkable book. Future discussions of social policy cannot proceed without taking the arguments and evidence of this book into account.'' --James S. Coleman, University of Chicago
''Charles Murray will infuriate people. But if they read carefully he will also make them think.'' --Ken Auletta, New York Times bestselling author
''A remarkable book. Future discussions of social policy cannot proceed without taking the arguments and evidence of this book into account.'' --James S. Coleman, University of Chicago
''Charles Murray will infuriate people. But if they read carefully he will also make them think.'' --Ken Auletta, New York Times bestselling author --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
84 of 92 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Mr. Murray's analysis of government social programs in the past half century was an eye-opener for a born-and-raised liberal Democrat like myself. It is difficult to disagree with his overall conclusion that these programs have generally been failures, and in many cases did more harm than good. This is not easy to swallow if you were raised with the firmly entrenched (and deeply righteous) belief that people who "really care" always support well-intentioned government programs that aim to solve social problems. It has always been an assumption in my thinking that those who opposed virtually any new government agency or social program lacked compassion, or worse. But, as Mr. Murray points out, these programs, including welfare, housing projects, medicaid, and other twentieth century experiments, must be judged as objectively as possible based on results. And the results are not impressive.
46 of 52 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
While the President and the Congress debate the levels of funding for the welfare state in the coming century, Charles Murray makes a very convincing arguement for why it should be done away with altogether. Replete with statistical analysis (including the raw data from federal government sources), Murray argues that should an outside observer review the statistics on the economic progress of blacks and the poor from about 1963 onward, without any social context, they would have to conclude that a systematic effort was afoot to ensnare a large group of people in perpetual poverty. Murray explains the dynamics behind the failure of welfare policy and argues a more generic case as to why nearly all government efforts to induce behavioral change in the population are doomed to failure. Murray's account is well supported, crystal clear, and highly thought-provoking. Recommended for all who wish to be involved in welfare policy or its debate for the coming century.
46 of 55 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It is not often that you read a perfectly convincing argument, but this book did it for me. The charts alone tell the whole story: increased spending on welfare while poverty is decreasing, coupled with higher crime, illegitimacy, unemployment, low birth weight all beginning within the years 1964-68. I've never cried at a movie, but if any book deserved a few tears, this would be it. Apart from the increase in birth rates, which Murray tries but fails to explain as a function of rational choices (can it ever?), every other statistic is shown by Murray to be the indirect result of well-intentioned and perfectly disastrous policies. Beginning with the indifference to poverty in 1954, to the modest programs under Kennedy, to the whole-hearted expansion under Johnson, to the institution of a permanent minimum income under Nixon, the war on poverty was lost within three years without anyone bothering to call off the troops. Murray makes the point that any slight "variance" in the statistics, even if only a tenth of a percent, is considered significant, but illegitimacy among poor blacks, for instance, drops from 80% to 40% in a matter of a few years. How human behavior, perfectly stable for decades, can change in a matter of a few years is, in fact, shocking, and Murray engages in a little detective work that is entirely convincing. The reason is in fact no mystery: if you pay people to stay unmarried, live apart, and not work, they will do precisely that. If, on top of that, you stop jailing criminals and seal their juvenile records, crime will also go up. That the Watts riots occured just two weeks after the 1964 civil rights legislation, and the new welfare poliicies were instituted the same year, is no accident either. Murray is perhaps so hard for liberals to swallow because he fingers precisely their liberal guilt and its attendant policies for the subsequent underclass epidemic. When the lawyers and social workers start justifying handouts and remove the stigma from welfare, the poor are made to feel that only chumps work for a living, and that feeling can only be exacerbated by what they see of white wealth on tv. (No one is more attuned in America to the magical power of brand names than the poor). Which brings up my only criticism of Murray: just because rational choices can explain the entirety of a behavior does not mean they are the sole cause. As Magnet argues in "The Dream and the Nightmare," part of the reason for the wholesale breakdown of the poor black family has to be pinned on the "counterculture" and its disparagement of work, thrift, etc., but as for what he does try to show, Murray gets everything but a confession.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Should be required reading for every registered voter, students
Average productive American Citizens who work, play, worship, study, rent, own, manage, invest, and raise families have noticed the symptoms and effects of secular government "aid"... Read more
Published 1 month ago by WorkingStiff
Murray and the Learning Experience
Whether you agree with his findings or not, there is a lot to learn in this book. Murray's analysis is exhaustive and well-supported. Read more
Published 11 months ago by JSmalls
Another excellent data analysis by Murray
This is a really interesting book. Charles Murray reviews the failure of social programs to alleviate social ills among blacks in the U.S. over the 1950 to 1980 period. Read more
Published on January 22, 2010 by Gaetan Lion
Reasonable tone, oh so convincing. Half a star.
For the gullible layperson, this is an impressive book. Lots of numbers. Many charts. Wow. No vitriol, no racism--in fact, a very reasonable tone. Read more
Published on July 14, 2009 by Moten Swing
Welfare State Failures
Reading Marvin Olasky's The Tragedy of American Compassion prodded me to read a book I've seen cited for ten years, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980, by Charles... Read more
Published on April 7, 2009 by Gerard Reed
I got this book on the advice of a conservative discussion group...
I got this book on the recommendation of someone in the Eons, Conservative Action Group. I have not finished it yet.
Published on March 18, 2009 by C. Acton
NEARLY 60 PAGES OF DATA
Many of the haters call this book "poorly researched" and "pseudo-scholarship" and a "hateful rant". Read more
Published on December 28, 2008 by Vain Saints
This book is not about race...
Losing ground uses the coincidence of the post segregation poverty of African Americans to demonstrate the devastating effects social welfare programs have on the futures of poor... Read more
Published on August 27, 2007 by Kennen Haas
Interesting read
Murray's claims have been discredited since the 1984 publication of this book. However, it is interesting to look into how Murray perceived the welfare issue 20 years ago.
Published on February 6, 2007 by R. Anderson
An example of political and racist "science"
Murray's book is good for those racist republican white men, who don't understand the underlying socio-cultural-historical patterns, that makes the socioeconomic status of the... Read more
Published on January 15, 2007
Inside This Book
(learn more)
First Sentence:
OUR TOPIC is the poor and the discriminated-against as they have been affected by "social policy." Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
latent poverty, unintended reward, hardcore unemployed, elite wisdom, antipoverty bill, net poverty, job entrants, black arrests, unemployment ratio, intergenerational poverty Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Food Stamps, Great Society, New York, Supreme Court, Lyndon Johnson, New Deal, Maximizing Short-Term Gains, Second World War, Summary of the Federal Effort, Vietnam War, Civil Rights Act, Executive Order, Implementing the Elite Wisdom, Job Corps, John Kennedy, Academic Press, Bureau of the Census, Cook County, Decade of Federal Antipoverty Programs, Department of Education, Department of Justice, Department of Labor, Government Printing Office, Law of Unintended Rewards New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
OUR TOPIC is the poor and the discriminated-against as they have been affected by "social policy." Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
latent poverty, unintended reward, hardcore unemployed, elite wisdom, antipoverty bill, net poverty, job entrants, black arrests, unemployment ratio, intergenerational poverty Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Food Stamps, Great Society, New York, Supreme Court, Lyndon Johnson, New Deal, Maximizing Short-Term Gains, Second World War, Summary of the Federal Effort, Vietnam War, Civil Rights Act, Executive Order, Implementing the Elite Wisdom, Job Corps, John Kennedy, Academic Press, Bureau of the Census, Cook County, Decade of Federal Antipoverty Programs, Department of Education, Department of Justice, Department of Labor, Government Printing Office, Law of Unintended Rewards New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 92
books:
See all 92 books this book cites
- Crime and Public Policy by James Q. Wilson on 5 pages
- WELFARE: POLITICAL ECONOMY (Hoover Institution Press Publication) by Martin Anderson on 4 pages
- Final report on 4 pages
- Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America by Christopher Jencks on 4 pages
- Thinking About Crime by James Q. Wilson on 4 pages
See all 92 books this book cites
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