Losing Ground by {author}: summary and why it matters

What it argues

Murray starts with a puzzle: since the mid-1960s, federal spending on the poor increased steeply, yet progress against poverty stalled, and in some respects, such as unemployment among young Black men and the rise in out-of-wedlock births, got worse. He argues that the programs themselves changed incentives.

Using a thought experiment about a young couple, Harold and Phyllis, he shows how welfare rules could make work and marriage less attractive than dependency, and how a changed climate lowered the stigma of failing to support oneself. Well-meaning policies, he contends, made short-term choices rational that were disastrous in the long term.

He ends with a radical proposal: eliminate the federal welfare and income-support structure for working-age persons, leaving the rest to families, communities and the labor market.

Why it matters

The book was a landmark in the shift of welfare thinking, and it is often credited with influencing the debate that led to the welfare reform act of 1996. Critics argued that Murray's data were selective and his explanations incomplete, and the dispute continues.

About the author

Charles Murray (born 1943) is an American social scientist at the American Enterprise Institute. He worked in Thailand with the Peace Corps in the 1960s and later as an evaluator of social programs. He wrote Losing Ground while a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and later coauthored The Bell Curve in 1994, a controversial book on intelligence and class.

Who should read it

Policy readers and anyone interested in the history of the welfare debate.