Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: $Revision: 1.6.2.16 $; site inmet.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!yale!inmet!nrh From: nrh@inmet.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Orphaned Response Message-ID: <7800419@inmet.UUCP> Date: Sun, 1-Sep-85 01:28:00 EDT Article-I.D.: inmet.7800419 Posted: Sun Sep 1 01:28:00 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 4-Sep-85 05:27:45 EDT References: <163@gargoyle.UUCP> Lines: 227 Nf-ID: #R:gargoyle:-16300:inmet:7800419:177600:11957 Nf-From: inmet!nrh Sep 1 01:28:00 1985 >/* Written 6:09 pm Aug 21, 1985 by gargoyle!carnes in inmet:net.politics */ >/* ---------- "Have welfare programs hurt the poor" ---------- */ >> [Suggestion that people read "Losing Ground", by Charles Murray for >> evidence that social programs have hurt those they were intended to help. > >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. I'm intrigued, and will read the article. In the meantime..... >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 % Excuse me, but exactly WHICH claim of Murray's are you talking about? If you're talking about the sort of poverty measured by the official poverty index, you'll find that your figures are reflected in a graph on page 65 of Murray's book. It's also sort of obvious that the great drops in poverty end around 1968. > >(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. Remarkable. Murray dealt with this point in detail in "Losing Ground", in advance, in a section called "Progress Didn't Really Stop -- The Poverty Measure Is Misleading" (in this part of "Losing Ground", the sections were likely objections to his arguments). To quote: The official poverty statistic is based on gross cash income. What would happen if we were to include the dollar value of the "in-kind" assistance (Food Stamps, Medicaid, housing benefits) in income? What would happen if we were to take underreporting of income into account. What would happen if we were to take tax and social security liabilities into account? In other words, what would the poverty figure look like if we were to consider net income available for consumption spending? Timothy Sneeding, then at the Institute for Research on Poverty, developed such an estimate, which I shall refer to as "net poverty": The percentage of the population remaining beneath the poverty level after net income for consumption spending has been estimated. In the fifties, in-kind transfers were so small that we may assume the percentage of net poor was within a percentage point or two of the official figure (the underreporting factor was the source of any difference between the figures, offset to some extent by tax liabilities). As late as 1968, the gap between official poverty and net poverty was still quite small -- only 2.9 percentage points. The decreases in net poverty continued into the early 1970s. It was 1972 when progress on net poverty slowed, two years after the marked slowdown in the fall of official poverty. Thereafter, net poverty failed to sustain additional reductions. In 1979, net poverty stood at 6.1 percent of the population, compared with 6.2 percent in 1972, despite more than a doubling of real expenditures on in-kind assistance during the interim. Using net poverty as the measure changes the size of the baseline of persons living in poverty, but it does not change the nature of the puzzle: Huge increases in expenditures coincided with an end to progress. (pp 63) You will note that Murray was quite aware of the "net poverty" notion -- and that his claim was NOT that there are more poor, but that the process of lowering the number of poor has slowed. >.... >"First, contrary to what Murray claims, `net' poverty declined almost >as fast after 1965 as it had before. Murray's claim is that people spent an awful lot of money to try and eliminate poverty and that instead we got a slowing of the elimination of poverty. Your quotations from Jencks seem to indicate that he agrees. Having net poverty decline "almost as fast" when a great deal more money has been spent on making it decline seems like a poor payoff. >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. "Unfavorable economic conditions", eh? I suggest you read the section Murray calls "Of Course Progress Stopped -- The Economy Went Bad". In particular: Economic Growth during the 1970's was actually *greater* than during the peacetime 1950's, memories of Eisenhower prosperity notwithstanding. The average annual growth rate from 1953 to 1959 was 2.7 percent, noticeably lower than the average annual than the average annual growth of 3.2 percent from 1970 to 1979. Moreover, the lower growth of the of the seventies took the form of a few very bad years. During those years that had growth rates as high of those of the palmy days of the 1960s, the trendlines on poverty "should" have behaved as they did during the comparable growth years of the fifties and sixties. But they did not..... Even after holding both population change and inflation constant, per capita GNP increased only a little less rapidly in the seventies than it had in the booming sixties, and much faster than during the fifties. Growth did not stop. But, for some reason, the benefits of economic growth stopped trickling down to the poor. (pp 59) >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. I'll defer comment on this one until I've read Jencks, except to note that Murray has a section labeled "It Would Have Been Worse Otherwise", he leads into his notion that there was a shift in the pattern of acquisition of jobs by the poor. Why? Well, the government HAD started messing around with the economic destinies of the poor and..... >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.... Nobody faults their efforts. Efforts, though, are cheap. It is RESULTS that are to be measured, and RESULTS which must determine whether a choice was bad or good. Murray's book is about RESULTS, not efforts, intentions, or wishful thinking, except insofar as these led to poor results. > [Jencks' objection to Murray regarding AFDC regulations and literacy] > >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.... It seems to me that I've seen studies showing that unemployed families tend to be pretty miserable and have a high breakup rate. I'll see if I can dig one up. >"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. WHOA! Do I hear even an echo of "and if nothing else changed" here? >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? Hmmm.... I suspect that this is partly a matter of definition, and partly a matter of the poor inhabiting the same planet as the rest of us. If, for example, the presence of illegal heroin leads some into crime, does it not also create echoing crime among those for whom crime is simply an easier way to make money, as demonstrated by the bucks raked in by those with habits to support? >"*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." I'm delighted to hear such agreement.