Chapter twelve of Charles Murray’s book Loosing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 is entitled Incentives to Fail I: Maximizing Short-Term Gains. I believe that this title is very fitting and aims directly at the center of an issue of American policy, which has been characterized by many, both Democrats and Republicans as a failure. The social policy that was discussed is the American Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which was designed to combat poverty in America by giving individuals money for food and medicine. In Murray’s chapter he introduces two hypothetical Americans who were not married but had just given birth to a child. Murray purposely did not give the couple any distinguishing racial features (to eliminate prejudice) rather he gave the couple generic characteristics, such as they had only had a high school education, come from poor families, etc. Murray, uses this hypothetical couple in two scenarios one based in the 60’s and the other in the 70’s. His scenarios where aimed to show the reader how the system had failed. This failure was highlighted when the reader realized (much to my surprise) that in all possible scenarios the programs such as the AFDC seamed to coerce couples into remaining unwed because the benefits of remaining an unwed live in couple outweighed (financially) the benefits of marriage. This is due to the fact that under both legislative acts and court decisions a woman would loose her AFDC benefits if she was married because her husband’s income would be considered in to the equation of determining how much support she would receive under the AFDC. What American social policy was resulting in was unwed couples who took advantage of the system. Couple would “shack up” and have babies. The more children they had the more money they would receive from the AFDC. I believe that this is a disgrace. What country would promote such policy? It was d...
