Volume 32, Number 8 · May 9, 1985
How Poor Are the Poor?
By Christopher Jencks
Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980
by Charles Murray
Basic, 323 pp., $23.95
From 1946 until 1964 the conservative politicians who dominated Congress thought that the federal government might be capable of transforming American society, but they saw this as a danger to be avoided at almost any cost. For the following twelve years the liberals who dominated Congress thought that the federal government should try to cure almost every ill Americans were heir to. After 1976 the political climate in Congress changed again. The idea that government action could solve—or even ameliorate—social problems became unfashionable, and federal spending was increasingly seen as waste. As a result, federal social-welfare spending, which had grown from 5 percent of the nation's gross national product in 1964 to 11 percent in 1976, has remained stuck at 11 percent since 1976.
Review, 8825 words
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