Losing Ground by Murray

Murray’s argument in Losing Ground

Why do some people remain in poverty? One explanation focuses on the opportunities available to them; another focuses on their behaviour and the incentives influencing their choices. Charles Murray’s Losing Ground, published in 1984, developed the second approach in relation to American society.

Murray is associated with the New Right, a perspective that stresses self-reliance, individual responsibility and traditional values such as hard work and family life. He argued that policies intended to help poor people were instead encouraging the growth of an underclass dependent on state benefits.

For Murray, an underclass was not simply a group with low incomes. He defined it culturally, through behaviour and values: dependence on welfare, an apparent unwillingness to work and tolerance of behaviour that conflicted with mainstream expectations. This distinction matters because being poor does not, by itself, demonstrate any of these attitudes.

How welfare could discourage self-sufficiency

State welfare includes benefits that provide financial support. Murray believed that American welfare reforms which increased benefit levels had weakened the incentive to support oneself through paid employment. In his account, a growing number of single parents and young people lost interest in getting jobs because benefits offered an alternative source of income.

The mechanism he proposed was a change in incentives: if welfare makes it easier to manage without employment, people may have less reason to seek work. He also argued that support for lone parents could encourage parenthood outside marriage and reduce fathers’ incentive to remain responsible for their children. These were Murray’s claims about the effects of policy, not established descriptions of all benefit recipients or lone parents.

Murray believed dependency could continue across generations. Children growing up without a working adult as a role model might come to regard reliance on benefits as normal. In this argument, welfare affects not only income but also the values children learn about work and responsibility.

Why Murray saw an underclass as a threat

Murray argued that a growing underclass threatened both the economic and social fabric of American society. Economically, he regarded the cost of supporting people through benefits as a burden on taxpayers. Socially, he associated the underclass with a rising crime rate and communities in which conventional expectations were weakened.

His concern was therefore broader than poverty itself. He believed traditional values of honesty, family life and hard work were being replaced by an alternative value system that tolerated crime and other forms of anti-social behaviour. In his view, this undermined the shared expectations needed for society to function.

Applying the argument to Britain

Murray visited Britain in 1989, after the publication of Losing Ground, and argued that Britain was also developing an underclass. He identified three signs:

• Rising births outside marriage, described in his argument as rising ‘illegitimacy’.
• A rising crime rate.
• An apparent unwillingness among some young people to seek employment.

He treated these trends as indicators of changing behaviour and values. However, a birth outside marriage does not itself demonstrate welfare dependency, and unemployment does not necessarily show an unwillingness to work. The meaning attached to these indicators is part of what sociologists debate.

Evaluating the cultural explanation

A central criticism is that Murray largely ignores economic causes of poverty and unemployment. During a recession, for example, jobs may disappear even when people want to work. Limited employment opportunities and qualifications can restrict people’s choices. A structural explanation therefore sees disadvantage as a consequence of social inequality, rather than mainly a result of different values.

Critics also challenge Murray’s evidence base. Much research suggests that benefits do not have the effects he claimed, and that many people labelled as an underclass have conventional aspirations: they want paid employment and stable relationships. This directly challenges his picture of a group rejecting mainstream values.

Official statistics can identify patterns in employment, crime or births outside marriage, but they do not directly reveal people’s motives. Even if benefit receipt and unemployment occur together, this does not establish that benefits caused unemployment: losing a job may be the reason someone needs benefits. Evidence about people’s attitudes and access to work is needed to assess the explanation.

The label ‘underclass’ can also stigmatise people by treating them as the cause of social problems. Critics describe this as blaming the victim. Murray’s defence would be that he was blaming government policies for creating harmful incentives, rather than simply blaming poor individuals. Nevertheless, his account still risks overlooking the barriers those individuals face.

Reaching a judgement

Murray draws attention to a legitimate sociological question: can policies have unintended consequences, including effects on incentives? But showing that such an effect is possible does not prove that it explains a whole group’s poverty or behaviour.

A justified judgement weighs his proposed mechanism against the evidence. Conventional aspirations among benefit recipients and economic barriers to employment weaken a general claim that welfare produces an unwilling-to-work underclass. A structural alternative sees disadvantaged people as victims of inequality whom welfare protects, rather than as the source of society’s problems.

Murray: core argument

• Losing Ground (1984) concerned American society; Murray applied his argument to Britain in 1989.
• New Right: self-reliance, individual responsibility and traditional values.
• Claimed mechanism: increased benefits → weaker incentives to work → welfare dependency → a growing underclass.
• Single parents and young people were central to his argument; dependency could be learned across generations.

Claimed consequences and British indicators

• Economic threat: cost to taxpayers.
• Social threat: rising crime and an alternative value system tolerating anti-social behaviour.
• Values threatened: honesty, family life and hard work.
• British indicators: births outside marriage, rising crime and apparent unwillingness among some young people to seek work.

Evaluation

• Cultural versus structural: Murray emphasises behaviour; critics emphasise inequality and limited employment opportunities.
• Poor evidence base; research challenges his claims about benefits.
• Many people labelled ‘underclass’ want jobs and stable relationships.
• Statistics show patterns, not motives or proof of causation.
• The label can blame and stigmatise disadvantaged people.
• Judgement: possible policy incentives do not establish that welfare causes an underclass.