Charles Murray: Why America is Coming Apart Along Class Lines
What this covers
Charles Murray, one of America's most influential social policy thinkers, has come out with a widely discussed new book called Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, which argues that Americans are splitting into two divergent classes, and that this growing divide could end American life as we have known it.
A self-described libertarian, Murray started his career as a liberal Democrat who spent six years in the Peace Corps and voted for Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential election. His political transformation came while he was researching his landmark 1984 book, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980, which marshaled exhaustive evidence that American welfare programs were harming the very people they were supposed to be lifting out of poverty.
Losing Ground was fiercely denounced by the political left, but soon won mainstream acceptance that the War on Poverty was failing. The simple fact is there wouldn't have been welfare reform in the 1990s without Losing Ground.
The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, Murray's 1994 collaboration with Harvard psychologist Richard Herrnstein, was more controversial. The book maintained that differences in genes contribute to differences in IQ, which in turn play a significant role in the life outcomes of individuals. Most controversially, Herrnstein and Murray argued that various ethnic groups have distinct differences in inherited intelligence. (Economist James J. Heckman reviewed The Bell Curve for Reason back in 1995: http://reason.com/archives/1995/03/01/cracked-bell/singlepage)
Murray has written more than 20 books, including What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation, and he's currently the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute .
Reason's Ronald Bailey sat down with Murray in March for a wide-ranging discussion of how his earlier work informs Coming Apart, why he remains libertarian in his outlook, and whether younger Americans face an relentlessly negative future.
Approximately 35 minutes.
Written and produced by Jim Epstein.
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Murray argues that American society has bifurcated into two distinct classes with fundamentally different life outcomes and values, and that policy alone cannot address this divide—cultural change around marriage, work, religion, and community is necessary but increasingly unlikely given the isolation of the cognitive and economic elite.
- Marriage rates diverged dramatically between upper-middle and working class (84% vs 48% in 2010), creating unprecedented class separation
- The cognitive elite have become geographically and culturally isolated from working-class America, undermining their ability to model or advocate for beneficial behaviors
- Deep human satisfaction derives from family, community, vocation, and faith—domains increasingly inaccessible to the new lower class—and policy cannot restore these
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Poverty can be understood through an incentive framework: the more you subsidize a behavior through policy, the more of that behavior you will see, much like paying for something increases its consumption.
“poverty is like anything else the more you pay for it the more you can have of it”
Status rewards—the cultural recognition of men as 'good guys' for holding down jobs and supporting families, and stigma for those who did not—functioned as powerful behavioral incentives distinct from economic incentives, and their destruction was a major mechanism through which welfare policy changes affected behavior.
“there's a chapter in that book entitled the destruction of status rewards and the destruction of status rewards said you know what a lot of these changes and behavior come from a lot of them come in the from the fact that it used to be that if you were a low-income guy who was holding down a job and supporting a wife and children you got status in your community as one of the good guys and if you didn't do those things you got stigmatized as one of the bad ones well those are incentives all right they're not economic incentives they're cultural incentives”
In the 1960s welfare policy changed the rules of the game for low-income people by creating short-term incentives that led them to do things harmful in the long term, such as not marrying or working.
“in the 1960s we changed the rules of the game for for low-income people and especially for low-income young people and that we changed the rules in the game in the ways that made short-term incentives such that they did really stupid things in in the long term”
Modern companionate marriage as the primary basis for marriage is historically novel; in the 19th century and before, marriages were based on women choosing husbands as good providers and fathers, not romantic love.
“the notion of companion in marriage is what i'm taking that you're thinking about to some extent is a fairly new notion in human history uh if you go back to the 19th century and so forth one description of marriage is a man and a woman standing back to back fighting against the forces trying to destroy their family those forces went away to a large part of modern society and they turned on each other instead”
Tocqueville attributed much of the success and moral superiority of the United States to the superior qualities of American women, who chose husbands wisely despite the difficulty of marriage without external force holding couples together.
“tocqueville talks about the marriage in 19th century america in some very interesting ways specifically he says in america they don't arrange marriages okay so they raise the daughters to choose husbands wisely and that's the way that americans can get away with marriage which has such very strict obligations because they are making marriages with mature decisions and he has this wonderful passage at the end of the book where he says to what do i attribute all of these wonderful qualities of the united states and he says i attribute it to primarily to the superiority of american women”
Marriage rates among white Americans have diverged dramatically by class: in 1960 about 94% of upper-middle class and 84% of working class were married in their 30s-40s; by 2010, 84% upper-middle class but only 48% of working class were married.
“back in 1960 about every almost everybody was married when they were full-grown adults in their 30s and 40s 94 in the upper middle class 84 percent in the working class you go to 2010 marriage is still alive and well in the upper middle class about 84 percent of adults are married in the whites upper middle class it's down to 48 in the white working class”
Out-of-wedlock births rose from low teens (around 10-15%) in the white population in the early 1980s to 40% across all races in 2012, reflecting a fundamental shift in cultural norms around marriage that cannot be reversed by policy alone.
“you were still looking i was writing in the early 1980s you still had out of wedlock births in the low teens i believe in terms of percentage of births”
Modern society is becoming increasingly congenial to people with high IQs because it is built around complexity, and complexity is difficult to navigate for people with lower cognitive abilities, creating systematic disadvantage.
“what we are doing now is we are creating a world which is congenial to people with high iqs people with high iqs love complexity they think complexity is fun that's why you have kohlberg at harvard coming up with his stages of moral reasoning which has seven stages uh you know at the primitive level people just think certain things are right and wrong but at a sophisticated level you understand that sometimes it's okay to steal in service of a higher good okay that is theoretically true i even believe it that that it can be okay to steal in service of a higher good but a kind of moral world governed by that kind of complexity is real hard to deal with if you aren't very smart it's much simpler if you are you know not an intellectual to have a criminal justice system which is based on very clear simple straightforward statements”
Early childhood education investments are more likely to produce benefits than K-12 education investment, and even without proven long-term cognitive gains, moving children from punishing to nurturing environments is intrinsically good.
“if you want to spend money on things early childhood education is going to buy you more than trying to jack up k-12 education that's for sure and children who are born into severely disadvantaged circumstances for my money you don't have to prove long-term outcomes to say that putting a child from a punishing environment into a nurturing warm environment is a good thing to do”
Attempting to advocate against contraception or single motherhood in the contemporary political landscape will result in being 'crushed' by critics and abandoned by political allies, making these views politically untenable.
“to raise that these days is not only going to get you crushed by the left you are not going to have people on the right standing up for you either um politicians across the ideological spectrum are scared stiff of alienating a very large voter bloc namely women and more specifically women with children”
Charles Murray is a 'lower case libertarian' who believes in the proper limits of government as understood by Madison and Jefferson, with only a few exceptions (like opposition to child pornography) to pure libertarian doctrine.
“so i'm a lower case libertarian essentially i think what madison thought and what jefferson thought in terms of the original structure of government and its proper limits uh so i'm i'm libertarian on all but the purest to pure things for example i'm in favor of drug legalization uh i'm not real upset about laws against child pornography and things like that to just give an example of where i park company with real purists”
The Bell Curve moved from incentive explanations in Losing Ground to cognitive constraint explanations, arguing that society is increasingly sorting on ability and that this creates problems for people with lower cognitive abilities.
“you went from an incentive explanation for a lot of the things that have gone wrong with american society and growing inequality to one based on more cognitive constraints that basically the society was sorting on the basis of ability would that be a fair sort of that's that's that's a good description and it was the same sort of social problems were being identified with those causes”
Deep marital love—a shared life, growing companionship, and depth of human connection—is not the same as the 'burning desire to jump into bed' felt at age 20, and this kind of love likely developed in 19th-century marriages more frequently than modern accounts suggest.
“love in marriage does not consist of this burning desire to jump into bed with each other that you feel at 20 years old it consists of a shared life and a growing companionship and a depth of human connection that's very difficult to describe to an outsider i think that developed i won't say as frequently because i don't know but i think that was a very common feature of 19th century marriages”
The primary cause of welfare recipients leaving the rolls after 1996 reform was not that benefits were cut, but that the bureaucratic process became more hassle—people had to demonstrate they were seeking work, making it harder to collect welfare while working off the books.
“you had lots of people who were working off the books so they were getting their afdc and they were holding jobs and all at once they couldn't continue working off the books as easily because the they were supposed to be putting in uh efforts to get jobs and it got kind of awkward when you actually were already holding on to a job”
The feminist revolution and women's entry into the labor force weakened male incentives to marry by removing the economic necessity of marriage, independent of any welfare policy changes.
“you have no changes in the welfare rules at all i'm sorry welfare incentives suppose none of the mistakes of the 1960s were made but you did have the same entry of women into the labor force okay so you have the feminist revolution without any of the policy mistakes what you would have then in low-income communities are more and more women who are making money on their own and in a lot of cases making enough money that it's significant and they could support the child on their own so in that sense you've already got a weakening of the incentive to marry because economically it's not as crucial as it was before”
Despite his father of three daughters status, Murray maintains that the feminist revolution, while genuinely beneficial for women, inevitably destroyed a major source of male self-esteem and dignity by removing their primary role as sole economic provider.
“i'm saying as a father of three daughters i'm glad the feminist revolution occurred it inevitably took for low-income men a major prop away from their self-esteem and their dignity it could not have been otherwise and that all by itself was going to make a big difference”
A libertarian society is desirable because it creates conditions where people of a broad range of cognitive abilities can be morally autonomous—it doesn't require sophisticated moral reasoning to follow simple, straightforward laws and norms.
“what you want to construct is a society in which it is easy for people of a broad range of ability to be morally autonomous and guess what that's a libertarian society”
Non-judgmentalism run amok—saying that people living without marriage, work, religion, or community are just making valid choices and are equally happy as others—is actually a form of cruelty and prevents us from acknowledging the human tragedy occurring.
“it is non-judgmentalism run amok to say that the person i just described unmarried not working no religion no community to say well these are his choices and perhaps in his own way he's just as happy as i am that doesn't apply to you is a form of cruelty and public policy cannot address this form of cruelty we have to address it by a deep introspection into what we most deeply believe about the sources of satisfaction in a human life”
Working-class people in the new lower class do not know that better lives are possible because the information about what creates satisfaction has been kept from them—they are not choosing full knowledge to live as they do, but are ignorant of alternatives.
“the other part of it is that the most impoverished part of all is they don't know there is anything better out there we have kept that information carefully to ourselves”
The thesis of Coming Apart is that America has developed distinct classes—unlike anything known before—that differ in fundamental ways across multiple dimensions (marriage, education, income, geography).
“we have developed classes that are different in kind from anything we have known before take the case of marriage cultural norm for rich and poor alike back in 1960 about every almost everybody was married when they were full-grown adults in their 30s and 40s 94 in the upper middle class 84 percent in the working class you go to 2010 marriage is still alive and well in the upper middle class about 84 percent of adults are married in the whites upper middle class it's down to 48 in the white working class i mean that's a stunning number uh that's a divergence unlike anything we've ever had before”
The isolation of the cognitive and economic elite is especially problematic because they have disproportionate influence on culture, politics, and the economy, yet have no real understanding of what the lives of most Americans are like, leading them to unintentionally or intentionally create policies that harm working-class Americans.
“the isolation is not so bad for people who have grown up in working class families or middle class families it's really problematic when you have people rising to positions of power who have never known anything about that world why is it problematic because they have so much influence on the culture and the politics and the economy of the country and when you have that kind of influence and you have no real understanding of what the lives of most americans are like you tend to do things that screw over the lives of other americans intentionally or unintentionally”
The fundamental sources of human satisfaction and a good human life come from four domains: family, community, vocation (meaningful work), and faith—and people living without access to these domains are experiencing a tragedy.
“if you say that satisfactions in life deep satisfactions in life come from one of four domains something i've been arguing for years they they come from family community vocation and faith you don't have to tap into all four there are happy atheists there are happy single people but if you don't tap into those domains you better have a really satisfying vocation for example or you better have a really satisfying community life”
The welfare reform act of 1996 bore no relationship to what Murray actually proposed in Losing Ground because it only modified AFDC, leaving intact Food Stamps, Medicaid, public housing, and other welfare programs, whereas Murray called for scrapping the entire federal welfare income support structure.
“the welfare reform act of 1996 borne no relationship to what i was proposing it was a single program the afdc cash program to which there were changes and changes that led to a lot of people getting off the welfare roles uh something we could talk about at length as to why that happened but there remained a big support structure in place didn't touch the food stamps program didn't touch medicaid didn't touch public housing didn't touch a whole bunch of other things”
The black-white IQ gap narrowed substantially from the 1930s through the 1960s, declining from about 2 standard deviations to about 1 standard deviation, but has shown no further change since the early 1970s.
“the the diff black white difference in iq measurements of which go back to the early 20th century narrowed substantially for for uh black and blacks and whites born in the 30s 40s 50s and 60s in the 1930s it was real big it was not one standard deviation to use the technical term it was closer to two and it narrowed to about one uh standard deviation maybe a little less even among kids born through the 1960s among kids born since the early 1970s there has been no change in the black white difference in any data set that that i have yet seen”
Juvenile delinquents in 1970s Chicago experienced the criminal justice system as irrational and unpredictable because penalties were inconsistent (they received harsher sentences for minor offenses than for worse crimes they had previously committed), leading them to view the system with justified suspicion rather than see it as a fair incentive structure.
“i evaluated a program in south side chicago in the 1970s for chronic juvenile delinquents and i would talk to kids who were outraged that they'd finally been sent to the can because they would say to me i'd done things lots worse than that and been caught for them they didn't do anything to me why they do anything now they were looking at a system which behaved utterly irrationally from their point of view”
A major source of life satisfaction is a good marriage, therefore when discussing cultural shifts and declining marriage, the priority should be talking openly about the objective goodness of marriage rather than trying to use state power to enforce behavioral norms.
“a major source of satisfaction in life is a good marriage in order to have a good marriage you got to get married so when i'm talking about cultural shifts i'm not saying we've got to make up stuff to try to propagandize people into doing what we want what we need to do is to start talking more openly about the objective rightness of these behaviors”
Group differences in IQ means are compatible with individualism—the significance of group differences is trivial as long as you treat people as individuals, which is the ethical imperative.
“there remains a difference in means that does not imply that all blacks are less smart than all whites the significance of group differences is trivial as long as you treat people as individuals which of course is the key”
The cognitive and economic elite live lives that embody the behaviors (marriage, work, community engagement) they prescribe for the working class, but use state power to enforce these norms through regulation rather than relying on cultural persuasion.
“they think they know best how people should live because part of what your argument is as i understand it is that those people are in fact living the sorts of lives that the lower class should be living are you not saying that they're staying married they're working hard yeah a lot of things are doing so they do know how the other half should live is that correct yeah but they shouldn't be able to make laws”
In 1960, there was an extremely powerful stigma against out-of-wedlock births; pregnant unmarried women had to go away and have their babies put up for adoption, and this stigma was not enforced through preaching but through cultural consensus that permeated society.
“go back to 1960 when there was an extremely powerful stigma against having a baby without a husband incredibly powerful if you got pregnant and you were in most parts of american society you went away to visit your relatives for for several months and the baby was put up for adoption you know it's an incredible statement how did that come about i mean because if you aren't old enough to remember those years but i am it was not that people preached on street corners it was that i was raised so that i knew that if i got my girlfriend pregnant i'd have to marry her and i can't even remember the specific times my parents told me that it was in the air and it was in the air because it was a cultural consensus”
Cultural consensus forms through millions of conversations that gradually shift the temper of the times, and this is the mechanism through which deep behavior change occurs—not through legislation but through cultural conversation.
“they will exist when you get conversations started that start with thousands of conversations and eventually go to millions of conversations and result in a change in the temper of the times”
Women believe the deal they have now (ability to support children independently, access to contraception, sexual freedom) is better than returning to 1960s norms, so cultural conversation about marriage must not be framed as demanding women go back to the 1960s.
“think that the deal they've got now is better than the deal that the cultural conservatives like you perhaps might want them to go back to in the 1960s”
Michael Harrington and other critics mischaracterized Losing Ground as economic determinism because they selectively read the book; Losing Ground actually emphasized non-economic incentives like cultural status rewards and stigma, not just economic incentives.
“there gee there's a chapter in that book entitled the destruction of status rewards and the destruction of status rewards said you know what a lot of these changes and behavior come from a lot of them come in the from the fact that it used to be that if you were a low-income guy who was holding down a job and supporting a wife and children you got status in your community as one of the good guys and if you didn't do those things you got stigmatized as one of the bad ones well those are incentives all right they're not economic incentives they're cultural incentives uh to say that i am an economic determinist is to have a very selective reading of losing ground”
The original thesis of Losing Ground was premature—Murray still believes incentives matter, but now recognizes that cascading cultural changes mean policy changes alone cannot undo the damage created by 1960s welfare reforms.
“oh and i still believe incentives matter uh what i'm saying in the current book is you we don't have anything in the political landscape that would permit changes that affect incentives enough to produce much of an effect”
Until there is a cultural consensus that single births are harmful to children and society, policy changes that would shift incentives toward marriage cannot occur, because politicians across the ideological spectrum are terrified of alienating female voters.
“what do you suppose is going to happen to policy if once again there is a cultural consensus that it's terrible for kids and it's terrible for the society to have single births lo and behold all sorts of policy changes in the direction of shifting the concrete incentives will become possible but until that cultural shift occurs you can't do a thing you'll be demonizing single women if you do well for example the republican party right now seems to be in the process and the elite media tend to interpret as such of a war on women for example for example about rick santorum i know rick santorum has said that contraception was a bad idea and he's getting crushed for it”
Public policy cannot directly address the existential deprivation of the new lower class; instead, what is needed is cultural introspection about what creates human satisfaction and then living those values openly so they become visible and transmissible.
“we have to address it by a deep introspection into what we most deeply believe about the sources of satisfaction in a human life and how do we transmit that relive it we live it openly and we don't make it easy for people to live miserable lives”
The cultural shift against stigma for out-of-wedlock births is particularly powerful because it was so deeply embedded—unlike policies that can be changed by legislation, cultural norms shape behavior at an intrinsic level.
“in the early 1980s there was still some stigma certainly in the white community associated with having a baby without a husband that's gone effectively it's gone a variety of other changes have occurred in sexual behavior in expectations of women in the workforce a whole bunch of things have happened which means that before you can make policy changes that are going to have much effect you've got to have some cultural changes”
The cognitive elite have merged with the affluent into a new upper class, as evidenced by the increasing coincidence of intelligence and wealth.
“people ask me about whether i think the bell curve is still valid i say look around they'd degree to which we now have a coincidence of the very affluent with the very smart is palpably obvious to everyone”
In 1960, classic wealthy neighborhoods (North Shore Chicago, Beverly Hills, Scarsdale, Upper East Side, etc.) had median incomes around $83,000-$84,000 in today's dollars, with only about 26% of residents having college degrees, meaning many wealthy people were high school graduates fully socialized in mainstream America.
“you know what the mean income in 14 of those classic rich neighborhoods in 1960 was it was expressed in current dollars today's dollars eighty four thousand eighty three thousand dollars something like that in other words half of the people made less than eighty three eighty four thousand dollars in today's purchasing power which means even in these richest neighborhoods you had lots of people who didn't have that much money more importantly you only had about 26 percent of them with college degrees”
By 2010, the same classic wealthy neighborhoods had median incomes around $163,000 (or higher in 2010 census data), with about 67% of residents holding college degrees, disproportionately from elite colleges, creating geographic and cultural isolation from mainstream America.
“go back and go to 2010 same 14 neighborhoods 163 thousand dollars median income that's two i'm sorry that's the 2000 census it's going to be a lot higher now when we get to the 2010 census 67 percent with college degrees a lot of those disproportionately high numbers from the elite colleges it's very far from mainstream america and the isolation is not so bad for people who have grown up in working class families or middle class families it's really problematic when you have people rising to positions of power who have never known anything about that world”
Murray's argument about the new lower class is grounded not in nostalgia but in both classical Aristotelian philosophy on human flourishing and modern empirical psychology and sociology showing what makes human lives satisfying.
“i don't consider that argument to be nostalgic i say that is grounded in a great deal of our understanding both in terms of classic aristotelian discussions of what it means to be a human being and also modern empirical psychology and sociology”
While James Heckman's early childhood education research shows real effects, Murray interprets the data more pessimistically than Heckman, seeing the glass as half empty rather than half full regarding long-term cognitive outcomes.
“heckman's a serious scholar and and i don't dispute his conclusion that these programs have an effect greater than zero i would not even go to the mat and say the effects are trivial i think he is seeing a glass half full that i see half empty”
Murray grew up on a relatively poor dairy farm in southwest Virginia and is regularly told he has "gotten above his raisin'" (raising), suggesting he understands working-class communities from his own background but has left them behind.
“i go and visit my relatives in southwest virginia i grew up on a uh relatively poor on a dairy farm and so forth and i'm i'm regularly informed that i got above my raisin that i'm uh being a snob”
If Murray had a time machine to 1960, he would have to be dragged there kicking and screaming, because many aspects of modern life are better than 1960—not because he romanticizes the past, but because he recognizes genuine improvements.
“there's part of the book which says if a time machine could appear that could transform me back to 1960 i would have to be dragged into a kicking and screaming and i described the reasons why because life in many ways now is better than it was then especially for people like me and people like you we're doing just fine”