carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (08/22/85)
In article <28200051@inmet.UUCP> nrh@inmet.UUCP writes: >If you want a lot of evidence for this, I suggest you read Charles >Murray's "Losing Ground". In brief, the welfare state has harmed those >it wished to help, and so far (a social-worker friend tells me) the best >that any liberal publication has been able to do is grumble that maybe >things would have been even worse if the welfare state hadn't been around. Christopher Jencks gives Murray a point-by-point refutation in the May 9, 1985 *New York Review*. Jencks basically concludes that *Losing Ground* is poor sociology, although it addresses some important and interesting questions. To begin with, contrary to Murray's claim, it is not true that the *material* condition of the poor deteriorated between 1965 and 1980. First, the official poverty rate declined from 1950 to 1980: 1950 1960 1965 1970 1980 P.R. 30 22 17 13 13 % (It has gone back up to ~16% since 1980.) In addition, the official poverty line represented a higher standard of living in 1980 than in 1965, because of a flaw in the way the Consumer Price Index measured housing costs. Furthermore, the official statistics do not take into account the in-kind benefits provided by welfare programs such as food stamps and low-cost medical care and housing. Jencks: "In 1965, Medicare and Medicaid did not exist, food stamps reached fewer than 2 percent of the poor, and there were 600,000 public housing units for 33 million poor people." Taking these benefits into account, Jencks estimates the "net" poverty rate at 18% in 1965 and at 10% in 1980. Another consideration is that the *access* of the poor to medical care has improved since the 60's, resulting in an improvement in poor people's health. Statistics on infant mortality and life expectancy seem to bear out this claim. If I have time later on I will discuss Jencks' reasoning in more detail, but for now I will just quote some of his conclusions: "First, contrary to what Murray claims, `net' poverty declined almost as fast after 1965 as it had before. Second, the decline in poverty after 1965, unlike the decline before 1965, occurred despite unfavorable economic conditions, and depended to a great extent on government efforts to help the poor. Third, the groups that benefited from this `generous revolution,' as Murray rightly calls it, were precisely the groups that legislators hoped would benefit, notably the aged and the disabled. The groups that did not benefit were the ones that legislators did not especially want to help. Fourth, these improvements took place despite demographic changes that would ordinarily have made things worse. Given the difficulties, legislators should, I think, look back on their efforts to improve the material conditions of poor people's lives with some pride.... "Murray's explanation of the rise in illegitimacy thus seems to have at least three flaws. First, most mothers of illegitimate children initially live with their parents, not their lovers, so AFDC rules are not very relevant. Second, the trend in illegitimacy is not well correlated with the trend in AFDC benefits or with rule changes. Third, illegitimacy rose among movie stars and college graduates as well as welfare mothers. All this suggests that both the rise of illegitimacy and the liberalization of AFDC reflect broader changes in attitudes toward sex, law, and privacy, and that they had little direct effect on each other." [end of quote from Jencks] Murray, in discussing the percentage of people who fall below the poverty line when transfer payments from the government (Soc. Sec., AFDC, etc.) are ignored, calls this "the most damning" measure of policy failure, because "economic independence -- standing on one's own abilities and accomplishments -- is of paramount importance in determining the quality of a family's life." Jencks comments: "This is a classic instance of wishful thinking. Murray wants people to work (or clip coupons) because such behavior keeps taxes low and maintains a public moral order of which both he and I approve, so he asserts that failure to work will undermine family life. He doesn't try to prove this empirically; he says it is self-evident. But the claim is not only not self-evident; it is almost certainly wrong.... "While I share Murray's enthusiasm for work, I cannot see much evidence that changes in government programs significantly affected men's willingness to work during the 1960's. When we look at the unemployed, for example, we find that about half of all unemployed workers were getting unemployment benefits in 1960. The figure was virtually identical in both 1970 and 1980. Thus while the rules governing unemployment compensation did change, the changes did not make joblessness more attractive economically.... Since black women receive about half of all AFDC money, Murray's argument implies that as AFDC rules became more liberal and benefits rose in the late 1960s, unemployment should have risen among young black men. Yet Murray's own data show that such men's unemployment rates fell during the late 1960s. Murray's argument also implies that young black men's unemployment rate should have fallen in the 1970s, when the purchasing power of AFDC benefits was falling. In fact, their unemployment rates rose.... Murray is so intent on blaming unemployment on the government that he discusses alternative explanations only in order to dismiss them.... "As Murray rightly emphasizes, no society can survive if it allows people to violate its rules with impunity on the grounds that `the system is at fault.' Murray also argues that the liberal impulse to blame `the system' for blacks' problems had an important part in the social, cultural, and moral deterioration of black urban communities after 1965. The such deterioration occurred in many cities is beyond doubt.... All this being conceded, the questions remains: were all these ills attributable to people's willingness to `blame the system,' as Murray claims?... Murray is right to emphasize that the problem was worst in black American communities. But recall that his explanation is that `we -- meaning the not-poor and the un-disadvantaged -- had changed the rules of their world. Not our world, just theirs.' If that is the explanation, why do all the same trends appear everywhere else as well? "*Losing Ground* does not answer such questions. Indeed, it does not ask them. But it does at least cast debate over social policy in what I believe are the correct terms. First, it does not simply ask how much our social policies cost, or appear to cost, but whether they work. Second, it makes clear that a successful program must not only help those it seeks to help but must do so in such a way as not to reward folly or vice. Third, it reminds us that social policy is about punishment as well as rewards, and that a policy that is never willing to countenance suffering, however deserved, will not long endure. The liberal coalition that dominated Washington from 1964 to 1980 did quite well by the first of these criteria: its major programs, contrary to Murray's argument, did help the poor. But it did not do as well by the other two criteria: it often rewarded folly and vice and it never had enough confidence in its own norms of behavior to assert that those who violated these norms deserved whatever sorrows followed." >More evidence? How about "The State Against Blacks" >by Walter Williams. How about *The New American Poverty* by Michael Harrington, as long as we are throwing books at each other. Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes