The Truly Disadvantaged

The Truly Disadvantaged - The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy
by William Julius Wilson

The University of Chicago Press 1990
1. Urban poor – United Sates. 2. Urban policy – United Sates. 3. Afro-American–Economic conditions. 4. Afro-Americans
– Social conditions. 5. United States – Race relations.
ISBN 0-226-90130-0 cloth
ISBN 0-226-90131-9 paper

I’ll eat my hat if Barack Obama was not influenced by William Wilson’s ideas of a "hidden agenda": "The hidden agenda is to improve the life chances of groups such as the ghetto underclass by emphasizing programs in which the more advantaged groups of all races can positively relate." (P120) The politics of poverty programs is being enveloped by universal "give aways" from the federal government. That is why Barack Obama ran for President on a policy of tax credits to 90% of the population. It is easier to sell government programs if everyone is getting a piece of the action.

The Great Society and the major advances of the civil rights movement coincided with disastrous trends in Black male nonwork, Black female-headed households and persistent poverty in the Black community. The problem is to explain this paradox and then to propose social policies. Certainly the progress of civil rights was a great benefit to many who have now moved into the middle class. Any further cries of racism would not help and only muddle the problem of those left behind. The Great Society as compared to the New Deal focused assistance only for narrow groups and divided people more than it helped anyone.

William Wilson, in The Truly Disadvantaged - The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy is against implementing more of President Johnson’s War on Poverty programs and certainly finds racism an inadequate explanation for the disastrous mess he was observing in urban ghettos. As a liberal sociologist, he disagreed with those who, like Charles Murray, blame welfare for our problems. After the 1950's, the number of single mothers in the Black community skyrocketed and Black male unemployment changed drastically. The ratio of Black to White unemployment was certainly better before the advent of the civil rights movement in the 1950's. Wilson lays out, rather convincingly, that employability and marriageability of Black men should be considered as the likely cause of the paradox. In his research he looked at male unemployment rates, mortality rates and incarceration rates and compared the results with the number of available women of the same age. (Male marriageable pool index = MMPI.) His graphs show a tremendous divergence between the MMPI for Whites and Blacks beginning in the mid 1960's and growing straight through the 1970's. Except for California, MMPI provided a statistical explanation for why Black women do not marry or remarry as much as Whites.
I part company with Wilson, however on many of his other theories to explain urban unemployment. He supports a "mismatch" theory, which states that unskilled jobs and minimum education jobs have left for the suburbs. Greg J. Duncan in Years of Poverty – Years of Plenty, found no statistical support in longitudinal studies for the "mismatch" theory. (Duncan also found no support for any correlation between attitudes and norms and persistent poverty. People aren’t poor because they have lazy ideas.) Wilson also claims that Blacks in the urban ghetto suffer from "social isolation." They apparently don’t talk to outsiders; they are trapped in the city, and middle class Blacks who previously provided a buffer have left. In this day and age of cars, telephones, and television, this covered wagon idea doesn’t pass the smell test. I am not convinced that "ghetto life" causes the destructive behavior of nonwork.

Also at the core of Wilson’s suggestions, is the idea of "equality of life chances." This is the idea that goes beyond equal opportunity, and says that government must compensate for the fact that some people are born with a silver spoon and that their parents have used the government to gain advantages for their kids. The problem with this theory is that it tends to deny the existence of upward mobility. Lawrence M. Mead in The New Politics of Poverty, states very clearly that even those who start from the very bottom will not be poor if they simply work. Mobility, even for those who start at the bottom is alive and well. See Years of Poverty – Years of Plenty. However, to the extent that equality of life chances means removing government from the process of purchasing advantages for your children, you will get no argument from a libertarian. Wilson is just trying to justify another government program.

Wilson certainly has it correct that a good economy, that creates lots of jobs, is going to help any poverty program. Fiscal and monetary policy are certainly important for a good labor market. We even agree that job training and education are vital to compete in our modern technological economy. Urban education has failed many young individuals. Urban schools imbue little self-esteem and generally stress the wrong goals. It is also quite correct that employers often require more education than is needed for the particular job. And beyond a doubt, far too many young Black men are unmarriable and unemployable due to their history of street crime and criminal records. I would simply disagree with Wilson that the solutions will ever come from his proposed gigantic government programs.

A powerful libertarian anti-poverty program would address Wilson’s three requirements: job training, education and employability. Employers regularly spend far more on job training than all the government training programs combined. The training they provide is truly focused on actual employment, not the hope of a job. The question is, how do you design policy to encourage them to provide training for those who are the most disadvantaged? The answer is the elimination of the minimum wage laws. If employers are forced to pay a wage higher than they want, it is natural for them to be picky about whom they hire. When they do hire someone, they will select those who already have both experience and an education. Because of the minimum wage laws, employers can’t afford to pay for as much job training and they don’t need to. At the lower wages, the employer might take a chance on someone who has a criminal record, who has little experience showing up on time, or who has no idea about how to act with customers or coworkers. Lower wages can purchase a lot of patience while basic skills are developed.
At forced minimum wages, employers will also hire fewer people. For example, minimum wage laws give a competitive advantage to capital intensive companies like McDonald’s. Ma and Pa operations can’t afford the computerized drink dispensers and depend upon a larger work force. Forced wage increases hurt them more. And not all job seekers fit into the McDonald’s mold. Eliminating the bias in favor of capital intensive companies may result in a greater variety of opportunities. Without the minimum wage laws, maybe fewer employers would ship work overseas or maybe they could reopen a manufacturing facility in the inner city. This would mean a powerful shift of job training to those who need it the most.

As Lawrence Mead points out in The New Politics of Poverty, the problem of education for the poor is no longer the quantity but the quality. The educational opportunities that parents want may not be those that can be tested. They may be looking for: safety, self-esteem, and intellectual preparation for the world as they know it. There is only one way to accomplish each individual parent’s goals, and that is: vouchers. Give power to individual parents. It would be downright racist to say that Black urban parents could not or would not select exactly what is best for their own children. Those who are down and out are often the most interested in the success of the next generation.

Marriageability and employability are vital to helping the truly disadvantaged. Williams touches upon the solution but I am sure, even he, was afraid of the "the third rail" of American politics, no, not Social Security, the drug war. Drug prohibition makes the drug trade appear to be a profitable alternative to employment. The resulting criminal rap sheets make the job search very difficult. Criminal activity also affects marriageability. As a parent, would you want your daughter marrying an unemployed gang banger? Williams specifically defined "MMPI" to include both unemployment and incarceration rates. The commencement of the Drug War coincides almost exactly with the meteoric rise in single parentage. It is not just the arrests, the criminal records, and the drug use; it’s the money. Without drug prohibition there would be much less profit in street crime. It may not even be the actual money earned by drug dealers. It’s the dream of big money. The young adolescent in the ghetto looks up to the guy driving the big car and wearing the fancy jewelry. Once someone is considering participating in the drug trade, why not theft, robbery, gambling, prostitution, etc? Far too many urban Black men are climbing the ladder of gang seniority. In Wilson’s language, it "merits serious consideration" that our government, by treating drug use as a crime rather than as a medical condition, we have set into motion Black male nonwork and the corresponding refusal of Black females to marry the fathers of their children.

Wilson was correct to focus on marriageability and employability as the solution to the paradox that was seen in the late 1960's and 1970's. Civil rights and President Johnson’s War on Poverty were intended to bring about an end to poverty. Instead, studies found greater crime, drugs, nonwork and single mothers. Charles Murray in Losing Ground suggested that Black moms didn’t marry because welfare meant they didn’t have to. Wilson disagrees and suggests that Black male unemployment and incarceration rates meant that Black women didn’t want to. To solve the problem of the truly disadvantaged, Wilson correctly recommends a strong economy, job training and education. He got it right that Great Society programs would not help. President Barack Obama will probably try big government "give aways" to 90% of the population. This was one of the greatest fears of the founding fathers that too much democracy would mean that the people would vote themselves a "pint of beer." The truly disadvantaged will receive a check, but will they go to work, and will they be marriageable? I think not. Ending the minimum wage laws creates jobs and job training just where you want it. Ending drug prohibition and treating drug use as a medical condition ends the funding for gangs. Vouchers will empower poor parents to get a quality education for their children. Maybe then finishing your education, keeping a job and getting married won’t make you a chump.

The Nonworking Poor in America -- The New Politics of Poverty

The Nonworking Poor in America -- The New Politics of Poverty
by Lawrence M. Mead

Basic Books 1992
ISBN 0-465-05962-7 (cloth)
ISBN 0-465-05069-7 (paper)
Poor - United States. United States - Economic Conditions. United
States - Economic policy

There is a small (.9% to 2% of the population) group of people who simply do not work. Their existence and behavior cannot be explained by the traditional liberal or conservative theories. Lawrence M. Mead asserts that lack of competence to work is the only remaining explanation. His recommendation is to change welfare into workfare which would "stringently" require people to work or receive training in order to receive government assistance. The core nonworking poor have the values consistent for employment but "...their belief that success is impossible becomes self-confirming." (P144) Experimental programs in San Diego demonstrated that welfare recipients were generally accepting of work requirements.

Economic growth, following WWII virtually eliminated the concept of the working poor. Poverty rates dropped dramatically during the late 1940's, 1950's and early 1960's. Of course a great many workers still experience bouts of poverty but their experience is generally brief in nature. The core of poverty is from non-work. It has become very personal and very difficult to explain.
Mead spent most of this very well researched book eliminating all other explanations. He covered economic growth, availability of work, unemployment, mobility within the economy, race, single mothers, daycare, disability, crime, drugs and many more alleged "causes" and impediments. None of them alone adequately explain the phenomenon on non-work. One of the most perplexing details is that good economic growth and tight labor markets have had only a small impact upon the core group of nonworkers. The 1960's and 1970's experienced high immigration, entry of the baby boom generation into the workforce and acceptance of women into all aspects of the economy. The number of jobs in the economy grew fantastically, but barely affected non-workers. Unskilled work was certainly available to those who wanted it. Immigrants with less education and no English were able to find plenty of work. You can’t blame the unemployment rate. Upon closer examination, most people don’t stay unemployed very long. The turnover rate is quite rapid. Those who want to work are back to work quickly. In general there is plenty of mobility within the economy. Most unemployed people quit their jobs to look for better opportunities. This leaves openings at all levels of the economy. None of these were satisfactory explanations for those who do not work.

A substantial core of nonworkers is made up of single mothers and Black men. Each explanation for their nonwork Mead reviews and dismisses. He claims marriageability of prime aged Black men has not changed enough to explain the sharp rise in Black female headed families. There is plenty of education available even if the quality is lacking. Racism may explain some income differentials and lack of access to better paying union jobs but it doesn’t explain non-work. Lack of daycare is not an adequate explanation. Daycare is most commonly supplied informally and inexpensively by friends and family. As a matter of fact, mothers prefer such systems over a formal setting even when the cost is paid by government. But mothers who want to work simply make the arrangements. Although Mead admits that welfare has had a significant impact on the number of single mother households (20-30% increase between 1955 and 1975), he still claims that it is insufficient to explain the extent of non-work and female headed households. The percentage of disabled non-workers is too small to explain this type of poverty. Mead dismisses crime as an explanation. Although short run profits from crime may seem attractive, even low wage jobs, he says, pay more. In the end, Mead’s conclusion is very direct. The core non-worker lacks the competence on his own to maintain employment.

If certain people don’t have the capacity, on their own, to maintain employment, he recommends that we change the rules of welfare and compel them to work, i.e. workfare. In part this is simply a rediscovery of the capitalist marketplace. It has always been said that the free market is cold and cruel: If you want to eat, you must work. Suddenly we have the same philosophy for welfare policy: If you want to receive welfare, you must work. Since the San Diego study shows that people were receptive of the work requirement, maybe the free market isn’t so cruel after all.
The Nonworking Poor in America, is extraordinarily well researched on the theories and explanations of hard core poverty. But I am left with a serious question. Just because there is no single explanation for non-work, can’t there be many reasons? I am perfectly willing to accept that some people are not competent to maintain employment, but I do not need to reject all the other explanations for non-work: the disincentives of welfare, the poor quality of our educational system, drug profits caused by the prohibition laws, the high cost of daycare services, the destruction of entry level jobs by the minimum wage laws. Remember we are only talking about .9% to 2% of the population. I prefer to believe that there is no magic bullet like "workfare" and competency but that it, along with many other reasons, explain nonwork.
I was particularly disappointed with Mead’s treatment of marriageability. Remember he claimed that the factors which affected marriageability had not changed enough to explain the vast changes in the rate at which Black women failed to marry the fathers of their children. William Julius Wilson in The Truly Disadvantaged, combined unemployment rates and criminal background as a test for marriageability. Therefore I found an article by Suren Basov, Mireille Jacobson and Jeffrey A. Miron titled "Prohibition and the Market for Drugs, An overview of recent history." World Economics Vol. 2 No. 4 October-December 2001. On pages 4 and 5 are graphs of the Federal government DEA budget per 1000 of the population 1920 -2000 and Total drug arrests per 1000: 1932-1998. I can’t prove causation and I don’t even know if there is a correlation, but I find it more than interesting that drug arrests, the DEA budget and single moms all skyrocketed in the mid to late 1960's. There must be some substantial relationship between criminal conduct, criminal background and marriageability. Looking at these statistics, I’ll put my money on the drug war and prohibition drug profits as a very meaningful cause of non-marriageability, non-work and persistent poverty.

Lawrence Mead was probably a tremendous influence in the eventual reform of the welfare system under President Clinton. Those changes possibly limited the length of time that you could stay of welfare and also required participation in job training and job search. The world actually improved as a result of that move to smaller government. Maybe we should try it again. By ending welfare’s disincentive to work; by ending the profitability of the illegal drug trade; by ending the minimum wage laws, and by legalizing all daycare efforts, the number of nonworkers should be reduced to the absolute bare minimum. We know that virtually all people want to work. Would the number of nonworkers be substantially less than .9% to 2%? We can only hope. Thereafter if nonworkers want or need help, private charity should be able to handle the problems. Charitable efforts are more easily adapted to the specific needs of the individual. If they feel that job training or education or counseling is a necessary precondition for assistance, they will try it. But at least those in need and those receiving help will have to say thank-you.

It is important to place the topic of nonworkers into perspective. They are only a small percentage of those we term "poor." However as we saw in Years of Poverty - Years of Plenty almost all of the rest of poverty has to do with short term bouts of poverty. These people spend most of their lives being not-poor. For a good discussion of that problem, I would recommend Stealing From Each Other by Edgar K. Browning.

Years of Poverty, Years of Plenty, The Changing Economic Fortunes of American Workers and Families

Years of Poverty, Years of Plenty,
The Changing Economic Fortunes of American Workers and Families
by Greg J. Duncan with Richard D. Coe, Mary E. Corcoran, Martha S. Hill, Saul D. Hoffman and James N. Morgan

Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI 1984
Cost and standard of living - United States - Longitudinal Studies.
Income distribution - United States - Longitudinal studies. Labor and laboring lasses - United States - Longitudinal studies.
ISBN 0-87944-285-9 clothbound
ISBN 0-87944-289-0 paperbound

If I told you that "the poverty rate in America is 13%", you should think that the problems of poverty are quite enormous. On the other hand if I said "only .7% of the population are persistently poor every year", your reaction should be quite different. The fact that both statistics are correct, shows the need to distinguish between "longitudinal studies" and "cross sectional studies." A census or cross sectional study tells you that "x" percent of the people are poor but tells me nothing about whether they are poor for a week, a month, a year or 10 years. A longitudinal study follows the same people year after year. We can have our debate over the appropriate remedy only after we know more accurately what we are talking about. If you don’t know the difference between bouts of poverty and persistent poverty you are not in the conversation.

Greg J. Duncan’s book Years of Poverty - Years of Plenty is an analysis of a longitudinal study called the Panel Study of Income Dynamics that started in 1968 and examined the lives of 5000 American families/individuals over the course of a decade. The outcomes of longitudinal studies changes your perspective about conventional wisdom because "helping the poor" becomes a moving target. Another statistical lesson to be learned is watch out for people spouting "family" data. It is no surprise that the makeup of families change substantially over time. Marriage, children, death, divorce, promotions, layoffs, emancipation, retirement, etc all mean that a statistical analysis of "a family" is virtually impossible. Keep your eye on the individual. By using the Panel Study data, Duncan reviews economic mobility, poverty, welfare, work, black men and women’s income. The importance of this book, is to examine, in a non-technical fashion, people’s lives over time to reveal the nature of poverty.

Although the book is packed with many different facts and topics, I found five main lessons concerning poverty: 1) economic mobility is alive and well; 2) many people experience short spells of poverty; 3) the persistently poor are few in number and different demographically from the general population; 4) the absence of persistently elderly poor raise interesting policy questions, and 5) persistent welfare use was very rare from 1968 to 1978.

Economic mobility is alive and well. Those who are poor today are, as a general proposition, not likely to be poor over time. People grow up, gain work experience, receive on the job training and over time, their incomes go up. One third to one half of all who are poor this year are NOT POOR THE NEXT. This is an amazing statistic all by itself. This is not India. We do not have an untouchable class. If someone says we must "help the poor," who are they going to help? Here today, gone tomorrow. The study noted that "... less than one in a hundred (0.7 percent) was poor all ten years." (P41)

The second lesson is that the experience of poverty is actually widespread. 25% of the population have at least one experience with poverty during the 10 year period. Bad stuff happens to lots of people. For the most part, they handle it and move on.

The third lesson is that persistent poverty, that is, people who are poor year after year is quite small. You can pick your own favorite statistic. Only .7% of the population were poor absolutely every year for the 10 year study. 2.6% of the population were poor in 8 of the 10 years. (Duncan settled on this statistic as his definition of persistent poverty.) 5.4% of the population were poor in 5 or more of the 10 years. The main point is that these numbers are quite different from the 13% poverty rate publicized from the cross sectional census statistics. The characteristics of those who are persistently poor are also very different from the general population. Those who experience an occasional bout of poverty are virtually identical to the general population. "Persistent poverty is heavily concentrated among blacks, and particularly among families headed by a black woman." (P50) Blacks are 12% of the population and 62% of the persistently poor. Only 19 percent of families are headed by black women but they constitute 61% of the persistently poor families. Only 30% of the population live in the South, yet 68% of those who are persistently poor live there. 4 out of 5 persistently poor people live in a towns smaller than 500,000 people.

Fourth, I wish the book had distinguished between how many elderly would have been persistently poor with and without social security. It does mention that social security "does not cover all of the elderly" and that there is low participation in Supplemental Security Income programs (only half of those eligible). What we saw above is that approximately 2.6% of the whole population are persistently poor but only one-third of those are elderly, i.e. .866%. Milton Freedman in Capitalism and Freedom asked whether mandatory social security was justified. He correctly noted that some people, if given the option, would choose to live for the moment and spend all of their money. Those people might later become burdens to the rest of us if their families did not take care of them. Freedman suggested that the argument be resolved by statistical analysis. If 90% of the elderly actually became a burden to society, then the mandatory aspects of social security would be justified. If, on the on the other hand, only 1% of the population became a burden, how can we justify depriving 99% of the population the freedom to manage their own retirement funds. I am not suggesting that Freedman’s statistical question has been answered by Years of Poverty, but the fact that less than one percent of the population is both elderly and persistently poor is certainly cause for further study.
Lastly, welfare is always a hot topic of discussion. Welfare programs provided assistance to 25% of the population at least once during the 10 year study. Very few of those people stayed on welfare very long and very few were completely dependent upon welfare for their support. About 2% of the entire population were persistently dependent upon welfare. They were "disproportionately female, black, and have children in the home." (P92) From these welfare statistics, Duncan concludes that the program is not guilty of creating wide spread dependency. While it may be true that welfare is not a deadly disease that once touched becomes permanent, it does appear to be having a serious impact upon a small group of citizens. It is amazing how different people respond to the same statistical analysis. Duncan sees the widespread mobility and concludes that welfare isn’t so bad, because it didn’t cause large numbers of people to remain persistently poor and dependent. I look at the same mobility statistics and ask whether we need welfare if most people are able to move up and out of poverty so quickly. What is wrong with private or charitable safety nets for those who experience a short bout of poverty? Why can’t people save money or fall back on family for brief periods of time? Obviously when you are poor, you can’t save, but remember that for most people, poverty bouts are very brief. For most of the time, people are fairly capable of normal monthly saving. As Edgar K. Browning points out in Stealing From Each Other, 46 per cent of the poor are in the process of purchasing their own home. This issue reveals one of the inadequacies of this Panel Study. They did not inquire about private safety nets such as saving, investment, home ownership and association with charitable institutions.

During the Great Depression this country was sold on the proposition that our problems were too big for a system of voluntary charitable assistance to the poor. As a result we now have a large welfare system and a nearly universal Social Security Administration. It would appear that we should have these debates over again based upon facts from longitudinal studies. Persistent welfare use at 2% of the population may have been actually been reduced by the Clinton era reforms. The tail of the Great Depression is wagging a very large dog.

Losing Ground -- American Social Policy 1950-1980

Losing Groung – American Social Policy 1950 – 1980
by Charles Murray

United States – Social policy – Evaluation.
Afro-Americans – Social
conditions – Evaluation
ISBN 0-46504231-7 (cloth)
ISBN 0-46504232-5
(paper)
ISBN 0-46504233-3 (second edition paper)
Basic Books, a division
of Harper Collins Publishers, Copyright 1984

When everyone else is doing well and doing better, why do a few fail to work, ignore their education, commit crimes and fail to marry? In Losing Groung – American Social Policy 1950 – 1980 Charles Murray says this is a rational response to the changing governmental policies. During the 1960's radical policy changes in welfare, education, and criminal law brought about changes exactly the opposite of the ones intended by their authors and supporters. The economy was strong; the Civil Rights Act passed; the government declared war on poverty and universal education was becoming a reality. By all reason, Black urban communities should have done exceedingly well. They weren’t simply passed up, their behavior changed and their prospects worsened.

It is important to note that life for the most disadvantaged had been improving in many ways between 1950 and the mid 1960's. The ratio of Black to White unemployment had been steady from the beginning of the century until the mid 1960's. In the early 1960's labor force participation rates for Blacks were actually higher than for Whites. Participation in education had become nearly universal. By 1959-1962 the return on educational investment for Blacks was higher than for Whites. Crime rates for Blacks were steady or improving from 1950 until 1962. Black victims of crime dropped considerably from 1950 to 1964. In 1955 only 1/7th of teenagers giving birth were not married.

But then all that changed. In 1968 latent poverty, the failure to be self sufficient, suddenly reversed its trend and started to climb. Unemployment among Black youths skyrocketed. The quality of an urban education slid downhill. Disadvantaged youths were receiving a very poor education. In the 1960's, crime rates skyrocketed. It was not just the urban riots; the increases were much more widespread and persistent. While almost all other groups and ages were having fewer children, young Black teenagers gave birth to about the same number, but their marital status changed. By 1982 the rate of unmarried teenage moms was 82%.

What is the source of this poverty paradox? Life was getting better for the Black middle class. The economy was growing. Government programs were focused like never before on ending the scourge of poverty. Yet matters were getting worse. What was the cause?
There was a tremendous philosophical and policy change in the early sixties. President Kennedy’s programs still reflected the older ideals that government should provide a "hand up, not a hand out." Even President Johnson as he signed several of the early War on Poverty programs like job training, VISTA and the Domestic Peace Corps in 1964 stated "the days of the dole in this country are numbered." But job training failed miserably. Community action programs accomplished nothing at all. Michael Harrington in his book The Other American said that poverty was the fault of the system; the individuals are victims. As a result of the 1964 urban riots, Blacks blamed Whites and White mea culpa was everywhere. "What emerged in the mid-1960's was an almost unbroken intellectual consensus that the individualist explanation of poverty was altogether outmoded and reactionary. Poverty was not a consequence of indolence or vice. It was not the just deserts of people who didn’t try hard enough. It was produced by conditions that had nothing to do with individual virtue or effort. Poverty was not the fault of the individual but of the system."

Welfare became an enforceable right. More and more money went into the poverty programs. In some Northern states, welfare became a realistic alternative to employment. The worker was a chump. In 1961 the law changed to permit welfare even if the husband but unemployed; in 1966 the government restricted home checks to see if a wage earner was there; in 1968 the Man-in-the-house Rule was struck down by the courts; in 1969 the residency requirements were struck down altogether.

The rules of the game for education changed. Without individual responsibility, schools no longer punished disruption or the failure to maintain academic participation. Good students became the victims of the changing times. The way society punished criminals was transformed, especially for juveniles. They could commit offense after offense without serious consequences. Even if they were punished, the new rules gave them a clean slate when they became adults. It wasn’t their fault.

There comes a time in a young person’s life when he or she must make some very difficult choices that bear incredible costs. They may already be poor and have few advantages. Working even harder to get ahead requires incredible sacrifice and perseverance. This is what new immigrants had experienced for almost 200 years. They worked multiple jobs so that their children would have better lives. If young people are told and believed that they couldn’t succeed because the system was against them, why sacrifice? If the pimp and the pusher appear to do well, with little threat from the police, why should you redouble your efforts? Getting a job or finishing your homework is not high up on the list of worthwhile activities. Welfare can provide a serious alternative to work. It had become easy to believe that the government should and would take care of the mother of your child and your child. As a result of the change in welfare rules, criminal laws and educational environment a small group of Americans worked less, committed more crimes, dropped out of school and failed to marry the mothers of their children.

William Julius Wilson in The Truly Disadvantaged - The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy disagrees with Murray on the cause of poverty and single parentage. He saw a combination of structural unemployment and criminal records as the cause of non-marriage. I see nothing inconsistent between the two ideas. Young black teenage moms do not want to marry the fathers of their children because they are not marriageable but welfare makes their desires more realistic financially. For whatever reason, these young men don’t work. They may be gang bangers. How can an expectant mother take him home to meet the family? What are they going to talk about; drug sales that week? Rather than defy her parents and marry, the she can live on welfare.

Murray is clear about his recommendations to help the poor: "Cut the knot." End the entire Federal welfare system for working aged people. This would include AFDC, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Unemployment Insurance (maybe), Worker’s Compensation, Subsidized Housing, Disability Insurance and more. The goal is simple. If you want to eat; you work. Going to work should be the rational choice. Failure must have consequences in order to teach great lessons. If the alternatives are grim, a young person will, all of a sudden, discover that he or she is quite capable of accepting the rigors and discipline of the workplace. Of course there are those who would be desperate. Thankfully the longitudinal studies in Years of Poverty – Years of Plenty, show us that, except for a very small group, most of those needs are extremely brief due to short term setbacks. Local authorities, whether public or private charity, would be best equipped to evaluate, experiment and satisfy those needs. We should once again differentiate between the drone and the deserving. Michael Medved, in The 10 Big Lies About America says the Murray’s recommendations were vindicated by the results of the 1995 welfare reforms. The plight of the poor actually improved by offering less welfare benefits. Stealing From Each Other. How The Welfare State Robs Americans of Money and Spirit by Edgar K. Browning provides a more recent review of all federal government egalitarian policies. His analysis is rigorous and the conclusions are the same. In order to help the greatest number of people out of extreme poverty, re recommends ending all Federal welfare programs (including social security) because their consequences are exactly the opposite of their purpose.

Murray is also innovative in his educational recommendations. A successful education policy is vital to an anti-poverty program. But to do so you must honor those who put in the greatest effort. Reward those who put in the hard work to succeed. Again failure is good; it teaches life’s lessons. Without saying it, Murray drives a dagger into the heart of those who oppose vouchers by recommending that all schooling be free. If you qualify, you can enroll in anything from pre-school to graduate school. But then armed with a voucher, parents can be involved and decide what and where would be the best education for their children. There will be bad parents now and in the future. But for their children and all children, success is the order of the day. If you pass the entrance exam, you get in the class. If you are willing to work at success, you stay, if not, you leave. Success is not guaranteed but rewarded.

I was disappointed by the absence of any recommendation from Murray concerning crime. Obviously he would say that punishment should be both swift and certain. But as I read all the poverty, crime, marriage, and work statistics, I kept wondering about the impact of the drug prohibition laws. This is just my own thought exercise. Many of our cultural trends begin in the Black community; not all, but many. Certainly many soldiers returning from Vietnam were exposed to lots of drugs and I wonder whether the drug culture started in the Ghettos of American. (I have seen very little literature on this subject.) We know that 1968 started the full fledged War on Drugs by the federal government but I also assume that it was a response to the increasing drug use. Drug prohibition can help explain the amazing change in behavior in the 1960's. The profits or at least the dream of profits from the drug deals made a minimum wage job seem stupid. Joining the gang to get your piece of the pie meant that you were "cool," but your girl friend was unlikely to take you home to her parents. Plus her parents would be appalled at the thought of their daughter marring a gang banger. Legalization of drugs is not something Charles Murray ever discussed in Losing Ground, but I would love to hear his response.

The poverty paradox is important to study and understand. The 1960's and 1970's saw tremendous changes in public policy from the War on Poverty. But for a small group of people, life got worse, much worse. The good intentions of government policy makers had very significant and very negative consequences for the people they were trying to help. The lesson from Losing Ground is not that welfare is some kind of infectious disease that once touched causes crime, nonwork, and failure to marry the mother of your child, but that setting policy based upon the assumption that life is not your own responsibility is a design to promote disaster.