Losing Ground Consequentialism in Charles

Losing Ground

Consequentialism in Charles Murray's Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980

The United States' welfare system and general social policy has faded in importance somewhat over the past decade if the level of public debate and commentary on the subject is any measure; issues like health insurance and now pension plans and Social Security have eclipsed the issue of welfare as these affect a far greater number of American citizens directly. Discussions about the necessity and advisability of a welfare program are still highly relevant, however, as is an examination and debate of the effectiveness of the United States' overall social policy as it currently exists and is administered. Charles Murray's book on the subject, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 was first published in 1984, and has since been edited and reissued several times. What's amazing, however -- and quite telling about political and public attention towards the subject of welfare -- is how relevant the basic text of Murray's book remains.

Clearly, there has not been a great deal of change in basic social policy, at least not to a degree significant enough to change the issue and the statistics as presented in Losing Ground. In order to understand the full implications and complexities of social policy as described by Murray, it is helpful to place his arguments in the correct ethical paradigm. Many politicians, scholars, and active citizens discuss policy issues from a deontological perspective, arguing about the moral and ethical necessities of creating and administering a system that provides for everyone, especially the needy. Discussions of practical matters and decisions are approached from this world of moral black and white; of what it is right and wrong to do regardless of the benefits and/or consequences of a given action. Though there is certainly a valid place for arguments based on such ideals, Losing Ground is not one of those places.

Charles Murray's ethics as presented in Losing Ground are definitely of the consequential school of ethical and philosophical thought. He does not disagree with a certain ethical imperative for taking care of the less fortunate members of society, and does not suggest that the United States simply abolish its ambitious social policies. For Murray, however, as well as for other consequentialist thinkers, there is no ethical or moral rectitude in continuing to fund a program that does not effectively serve the people for whom it was intended. His negative appraisal of American social policy does not stem from a basic disagreement about whether or not welfare should exist, or whom it should assist -- deontological arguments, in other words -- but rather from a belief that all action should be effective, and that action is simply wrong when it is as ineffective and inefficient as the current United States' welfare program.

The ninth chapter of Losing Ground, which Murray titles simply "The Family," is a perfect example both of the inefficiencies of the United States' social policy and Murray's consequentialist perspective. Throughout the chapter, Murray identifies and explores several facets of American families and the effect, if any, that welfare and other social programs meant to assist families and improve family life and health in American society are having. Murray's overall view of the situation, as the title of his book strongly suggests, is not a good one. Page after page, he presents more and more compelling evidence that the actions and policies of the United States have failed the citizens of this country in regards to providing them with the personal, familial, and societal enrichment, growth, and for many even security. Again, Murray does not base his conclusions on the rectitude of the actions taken, but on the evidence of their effects.

The supreme practicality that reigns in consequential ethics (the reason that utilitarian was an erstwhile term for the same school of thought) makes it difficult to judge a situation hypothetically or before he fact, but provides ample grounds for rumination afterwards. Murray begins this rumination on the subject of American families by first laying out the difficulty in measuring effects specifically because consequence matters more than the action itself. "Some women," he notes, "are entering the workforce because they want to; others because they have to...Deciding whether net changes in an indicator such as 'percent of children in families with a working mother' represent a plus or minus only for the most dogmatic" (Murray 1994, pp. 125). Understanding social policy at works, then, must be understood in the complex context of individual lives and the larger interplay of social forces, rather than on specific statistics alone.

Murray's basic argument throughout this chapter -- and indeed, throughout much of the book -- is that American social policy has not only failed to serve the poor, but that it actually perpetuates and exacerbates many of the situations that the poor are faced with in this country. Though this chapter is devoted to family, it is clear that familial issues cannot be truly separated from the other social factors, all of which have consequences on each other. One of the first specific issues he examines is illegitimate births, which was -- and still is for many -- a standard measure of the overall health of a society and the social and personal stability of its individuals. Despite new social programs, the rate of illegitimate births rose sharply during the period Murray examines.

Murray's discussion of illegitimate births is also incredibly revelatory of his extreme consequentialist perspective. He never makes a value judgment about single mothers or giving birth out of wedlock as an even in and of itself specifically because he does not think it is something separable from the other myriad issues facing, influencing, and informing the numbers of illegitimate births. In fact, it is precisely these issues that make the subject of illegitimate births so compelling. There are definite racial and financial factors involved in the demographics of rising single-motherhood, and even these don't tell the fully story. In Murray's own words, "the problem lay not just in the number of illegitimate births, but in who was having them: teenagers," and though the number of teenagers giving birth was not significantly higher in later decades, far fewer of them were married (Murray 1994, pp. 127). Murray suggest that social policy regarding the age of consent served more to break up rather than shore up families.

Murray also devotes a great deal of this chapter to the ways in which family composition -- namely the number of parents and the gender of the parent in single family households -- and race -- namely skin color -- affect poverty levels in the United States. Again, he finds it necessary to examine not only the broad issue at hand (i.e. poverty levels in American families), but also the specific individual factors that influence this issue. This is more evidence of his consequentialist perspective; whereas deontological ethics might claim that failing to provide security from poverty is wrong plain and simple, Murray seems to suggest that this failure is far more unethical when it occurs disproportionately to families whose head of households is a female, and even more so to racial minorities like African-Americans (Murray 1994). There is not simply an increase in poverty levels, but a disproportionate increase that has the added consequence of creating greater divisions in society.