Charles Murray. Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010. New York: Random House, 2012.
Notes by John Teevan, December 2013
This book is rare in its simplicity and in Murray’s ability to offer a straightforward argument. Though he uses many statistics and charts, he is no wonk, and his argument is memorable.
The four vigorous and sustained founding virtues in America, Industriousness, Honesty, Marriage, and Religiosity, are gone from American public life, having been fading rapidly since 1960. This demise is significantly harming America’s cohesiveness. Privately and surprisingly, the new super wealthy retain those virtues. They practice them to their significant advantage, but refuse to admit, proclaim, or encourage them publicly. The virtuous, the affluent, and the careless poor are now substantial new groups in America, in addition to the familiar blue- and white-collar groups.
It used to be that virtually all men 25-60 were in the workforce and working; they were married and had children. If they did not go to church, they felt that they ‘ought to go.’ Jim Crow was a problem as was drunkenness and smoking. Women seemed limited to a marriage and motherhood role.
There was no realization of ‘the poor’ as its own group, just that some blue-collar workers were poor, until Michael Harrington wrote The Other America. That, plus Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the Civil Rights movement, and the death of Martin Luther King, created quite a change in America as affluence spread among the post-WWII Baby Boomers. Civil rights (racism), personal liberty (abortion), and fairness (redistribution) became the new virtues. It is not that the founding virtues withered; they met their demise to the extent that the new virtues replaced them.
Part I: Formation of a New Upper Class
Ch 1: Our Kind of People.
The new elite have their own segregated culture: In 1960, there were 80k (0.02% of families) millionaires ($7.2m today). Today, there are about 1.4 million elite with between 10k and 100k in the narrow (or super-influential) elite (18,20). In 1960 they were scattered Cadillac and country club people, today they are a critical mass (33) of: 1) intellectuals (Ivys p30), 2) BoBo (see David Brooks) lifestyle, healthy/thin/NPR/environmental, 3) no pop tv/movies, 4) know no evangelicals, 5) helicopter focus on kids, who are also 6) isolated at work (41). This strikes me as much wider than the 1%. Half of all parents seem to be helicopter parents, and millions watch little pop TV, are healthy, and listen to NPR.
Ch 2. Foundations of the New Upper Class:
“Given the same interpersonal skills, energy, and common sense, the manager with higher cognitive ability has an edge and increases profitability by 10% instead of 5% — and that, combined with the larger stakes, also makes brains worth more in the marketplace.” (49). All this since 1960.
Bigger stakes: 1) In 1960, the #100-ranked corporation had sales of $3.2 billion. In 2010, #100 had sales of $24.5, an 8-fold increase. (48). 2) Brains are worth more: as business decisions become more complex and the stakes higher, a person who gives a 10% probability of achieving a big deal instead of 5% doubles the profitability possibility of a $100m deal (not 100k) and is worth 5% of the deal or $5m rather than 5K. 3) A much bigger pie with our new high-tech global economy was created by people w/high cognitive skills. (47). This is combined with a billion new low-skilled workers, which has an impact on the U.S.
College Sorting Machine: “Together, just 10 schools took 20% of all the students in the US who scored in the top five centiles on the SAT or ACT. Forty-one schools accounted for half of them. All 103 (elite schools), which had 19% of all freshmen, accounted for 74% of those top students. As a result, not just the sons of monied alumni, but the sons and daughters of high-cognitive parents are being groomed and sent to elite schools; this class is self-perpetuating, and fewer ordinary mortals are getting into the elite. “As of 1950, cognitive stratification among colleges occurred extraordinarily fast. As of 1950, elite colleges did not have exceptionally talented students, but by 1960 they did.” (57) “In 1926, the IQ of (the ivys) was 117, barely above the 115 of all college graduates.” (54) Now they are 130 IQ. College sorting machine 52ff. Marry e/o 61ff. Super zips p75ff.
Ch 3: A new kind of segregation:
(75) Super-zips: there are four clusters of super zips: In 1960 the highest 14 elite towns had incomes that went from $84k to $163k after 1960 and the median percentage of college grades went from 26% to 67% — much more than doubling” (76) They went from ordinary neighborhoods to isolated neighborhoods.
The super-zips are the 96th-99th percentile of family income. There are 882 super zips with 9.1m people in them (78). The broad elite are 2.4m (age >25) working in managerial, top military, government, and professional roles (19-20). The narrow elite are fewer than 100,000, and they make it all happen (18).
They form four clusters in NY/Manhattan (25%), Boston (10%), DC/NW (8%), and San Francisco (7%). (LA 5% and Chicago 3% had no densely populated bubbles; Philadelphia and Seattle are next, all others <1% (86). These are the broad elite (and narrow elite).
Price of new homes cf 1963=$129k, 2010=$567k (all in 2010$$) (p26). Politically, the 882 super-zips are all equally red and blue except the four top bubbles. Which are 6:1 left (98-99).
Ch 4: How thick is your bubble?
These bubbles are ‘thick,” meaning people in them do not live near or even know any non-elite. This chapter has the quiz and explanation.
Ch 5: The Bright side of the new upper class:
A brief defense of their contribution to the standard of living of ordinary people due to the concentration of people with high cognitive ability in productive work. “We don’t have the option of getting all the benefits of an energized, productive new upper class, one that makes all of our lives better in so many important ways, without the conditions that also tend toward a wealthy and detached new upper class.” (119). Any absolute reduction in their income will also reduce their productivity, but even if it’s reduced, they will stay clustered (120).
Summary: So, a 1) new post-war global economy puts a 2) higher value on cognitive skills, the 3) elite schools form a ‘college sorting machine’ that assures that those with brains are in business and not small-town clerks. These people 4) marry each other, not their secretaries. And with doubly higher incomes, they seek 5) elite n-hoods in increasing their isolation and concentrating their wealth, and 6) removing them from ordinary people.
Part II: Formation of a New Lower Class
Ch 6 The Founding Virtues:
Francis Grund, an unfamiliar German contemporary observer of America, with the French de Tocqueville, wrote about the founding morals or virtues of America, without which our constitution of the freedom of individuals was absurdly utopian. The virtues:
Industriousness: completely opposite from Europe, the poorer people were energetic as they saw the hope of gaining land ownership with a hoe and an axe (131). It was, however, a disaster to be an economic failure. Honesty: criminals were seen not just as hurting me but also as hurting society. Marriage: based on love, with girls being active rather than passive in the choice of a husband. (136). This meant that America had superior women, as Grund noted (137). Religiosity: even our deists could not separate morality from religion. Adams wrote: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people; it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” (139). Jefferson said, “The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man, and I, as Chief Magistrate of this nation, am bound to give it the sanction of my example”(in going to church). (139).
These four were bolstered by The McGuffey Readers after 1830. Not just religion, but all four, and without any racism or deprecation of women. We have replaced the cultural foundations of these four with the idea of liberty, working best if only we could get all the laws and regulations correct (142). The former use of schools to instill these virtues has disappeared; others have taken their place.
Ch 7: Belmont (MA) and Fishtown (PA).
These are two easily understood small towns of 1960s-style affluence and working class, without either extreme of poverty or wealth. The trends in these towns toward poverty and concentrated affluence are Murray’s demonstration that we are ‘coming apart.’
Ch 8 Marriage:
Marriage was a culturally accepted norm that did not denigrate women, but attitudes changed with the pill and sexual revolution. The norm of ‘tending the family’ declined from about 70% to 30% (1960-1990 (151) while the wrongness of extramarital sex increases among Belmont. The striking news is that Fishtown marriage declined from 85% to 50%, while never-married rates soared from 8% to 25%. Belmond stayed at 8%. Divorce in Fishtown soared to 23% while it remained at 8% in Belmont, and self-reported happy marriages sank from 65% to 52% in Fishtown while they recovered to the 1960 level of 72% in Belmont (157).
Children living with a w/single/divorced parent soared from 3% to 22% in F, while it crept up to 3% in B. White non-marital births, which had been at2-3% since 1900, soared to 25% after 1960. The less educated, the more likely an unmarried birth (now 60%) vs 5% of college graduates (160-1). One more: children living with a mom who’s 40: sagging to 87% for B, but falling to 30% for F.
Marriage has become culturally different between Fishtown and Belmont.
Ch 9: Industriousness:
American enthusiasm for work is declining to European levels. The percent of the workforce on disability was .7% in 1960 and is 5.3% now (170). Labor force participation rate: non-workers doubled through age 50, then tripled as older workers left the labor force (172). Those men of prime working age w/a a BA are 98% in the LF, while those with high school or less are 88%. 173). Women, however, went from 35-40% in the LF in 1960 to 70-80% in the LF in 2010 (184). In Belmont, 90% of women work cf. 75% of Fishtown’s women (185). Belmont’s % of working women overtook Fishtown’s in 1985.
In 1960, 82% or 90% had a 40-hour work week, while in 2010 it was 88% (B) and 60% (F). 188.
Ch 10: Honesty:
The way to measure honesty is to measure crime: his least exact measurement, but his best shot at this vague topic. The basic fact is not surprising: prisoners per 100k quintupled from 200 to 1000 in Fishtown after 1970, while it remained unchanged at about 25. Probation (an alternate to prison) soared from 581k in 1980 to 2,392k by 2008. Parole soared from 79k to 337k after 1970. All stats are like this: violent crime and property crime soared in F, while it stayed flat at near zero in B. Remembering that these are white stats is not easy. Personal bankruptcies soared after Chapter 7 was reformed in 1978, from 50 per 100k population to 400/100k population. This could demonstrate a few alternatives to a loss of integrity.
Ch 11: Religiosity:
“The importance that the founders attached to religion bordered on hypocrisy.” (200). While no one knows if a secular democracy can endure, Murray demonstrates that religion’s role as a source of social capital is huge” (200). Attendees have longer life expectancies, less disability, and more stable marriages. Evidence points to higher happiness and life satisfaction, and to higher self-esteem and lower substance abuse among the religious. Nevertheless, non-believers have grown from 10% (B) and 5% (F) to 20% since 1970, while de facto seculars have soared from 25% (B) and 35%(F) to 60% (F) and 40% (B), with Fishtown being dramatically and surprisingly more secular than Belmont. Similarly, religious involvement among believers has dropped from 65% (B) and 55% (F) to 50% (B) and 40% (F). The religious core has declined as well by 10% (B+F), but B is at 22% and F is well below at 12%. This group is too small in Fishtown to have a community impact.
Ch 12: The Real Fishtown:
Stories of social research interviews that demonstrate there is little evidence of the virtues and less evidence that there is adequate social capital. The serial casual pregnancies and joblessness are featured, though all virtues are covered. Fishtown became a Bo-Bo enclave in the 1990s.
Ch 13: The Size of the New Lower Class:
Three problematic categories: 1) Men who are not making a living has soared from 10% in 1969 to 30% in 2009, and all they needed was 50 weeks of minimum wage to qualify. If a man worked at the average janitorial salary, he would have qualified in 31 weeks. 2) Single women with children soared from 5% to 20% (F) while it went from 1% to 4% in Belmont. 3) The Isolates, those disconnected from community, have stayed steady at about 3% (B) but have soared from 10-30% (F). Adding up the categories, Belmont reaches only 7% problematic people, while Fishtown has soared to 32%. The new lower class has at least doubled to 20% and “it is a lower class that is changing national life.”
Part III: Why It Matters
The exceptional qualities of American cultures cannot survive unless these trends are reversed (235).
Ch 14: The Selective Collapse of American Community:
In the 1950s, Edward Banfield studied a group of Italians and identified their lives as characterized by amoral familism. This short-term, me-first focus is a threat to the founding virtues that could only operate under the unique American freedoms. Voluntary mutual assistance and groups are fading, as is America’s vibrant engagement in solving local problems (238). This is a serious contrast to problem-solving in Europe, which relies on the hierarchy.
Robert Putnam identified the dimension and then the demise of ‘social capital’ in Bowling Alone (2000). Participation, neighborliness, volunteering, and other connections are fading. There is a focus on public space in upper-class Latte Towns like Burlington, VT, where such social capital thrives, but in Fishtown, social and civic disengagement is threatening the very fabric of community. Some say that social media has become the locus of social capital, but this does not help Fishtown either. Where there are fewer children in families, social disengagement is likely. Where there is civic disengagement, people do not vote. Fishtown is down to 55% voting while Belmont remains in the 90%s (247).
Without social capital, society cannot thrive or even survive. Social trust or a general expectation of reciprocity, according to F. Fukuyama, writing about the fading of social virtues, is essential to wealth creation (247). The view of others’ trustworthiness has sunk in both B (to 55%) and F (to 22%), but the estimation of others’ fairness has held up well in B (70%), though it has slipped to 40% in F. The perceived helpfulness of others has fallen in both: to 60% in B and to 33% in F. Social trust is eroded by ethnic diversity (251). Some see this as the perfect reason for government intervention; Murray does not, because more social welfare through official bureaucracies is cold, while social capital and trust require the warmth of unofficial personal relationships (252).
Ch 15: The Founding Virtues and the Stuff of Life:
Aristotelian happiness comes from spending life on deep satisfactions rather than on passing pleasures. Murray posits three aspects of life satisfaction: 1) involvement in something important, 2) the expenditure of effort over time to achieve, and 3) a level of personal responsibility in accomplishing the goal, which may just as well result in failure. He seeks to measure four areas of happiness: 1) family, 2) vocation, 3) community, and 4) religion. He finds that the currently 1) married are twice as happy (at 40%) as another marital status group (257). Children add to happiness. 2) Vocation: 44% of workers and 57% of homemakers report being very satisfied, signifying the importance of vocation. 3) Community: This is more difficult to measure, but those who trust others a lot are three times happier than those who trust very little. 4) Faith: the more people attend a service, the happier they report themselves to be, with 49% very happy if they attend more than weekly.
Adding these together, the chances that a married person with a satisfying vocation, social trust, and strong religion will be very happy approach 70% compared to a baseline of those with none of these at 10% chance of being very happy. Want to triple your chances of being very happy? Add marriage and a decent job to your life. Even a person with a decent job will double his happiness if he marries (264). Income does not help much; this is a function of the founding virtues. As for Fishtown, they get less bump from marriage and social trust, but religion gives them a boost that does not help the Belmont folks, though those with all four report identical happiness (267). You don’t have to live in Belmont to be happy. Yet in both towns, happiness has sunk to 40% (B) and 10% (F) as the virtues fade away. There is little indication that Fishtown has a level of social cohesion to function.
Ch 16: One Nation, Divisible:
“Our nation is coming apart at the seams – not ethnic seams, but the seams of class” (269). These studies have been entirely of white people, but the results for African Americans are virtually identical, except for incarceration, where whites are much less likely to be jailed. “We are one nation, indivisible, in terms of whites and people of color. White America is not headed in one direction and nonwhite America in another. We are divisible in terms of class” (276-77).
Ch 17: Alternative Futures:
Nations falter. Europe has an alternative model with less personal freedom and more welfare. Europeans assume that government-provided food does not affect self-respect, nor do liberalized marriage rules affect intimate relationships. Self-actualization is immune to the security that European nations provide. America has believed that freedom must be meaningful, which includes responsibilities and consequences. It makes a difference if you got the civic service job because you did well on the test rather than because you are the nephew of the right guy (282). “The problems that these changes have engendered are of a different in kind from the problems of poverty.” (283).
If the Fishtowners face challenges, so do the Belmonters. The hollow life of the rich can be seen in the collapse of their elite code due to paralysis from Political Correctness. “The new upper class is keeping the good stuff to itself. (They) know the secret to maximizing the chances of leading a happy life but refuse to let anyone else in on the secret.” (290). Instead, they are willing to engage in ‘unseemly’ behavior, including a CEO ethic of obscene salaries that doubled three times since 1992 to $16m. “The hollow elite are as dysfunctional in their way as the new lower class is in its way.” (294).
The preferred alternative is a Great Civic Awakening provided that we a) take our eyes off of imploding Europe, b) recognize the false assumptions of the welfare state by admitting the facts (297), c) discover the simple solution of dividing up the cash committed to transfer payments among people (See his book In our Hands 2006), and d) are persistent in our allegiance to the American ideals. If we do those four things, we will also rediscover the founding virtues. If most Americans get and stay married, have kids, keep our jobs, and go to church as the elite do, we will turn the nation around.
We will also discover a deeper, richer meaning to life that goes beyond poverty relief: a richly textured life rather than a glossy one. He calls it simple because “A large part of the problem consists of nothing more complicated than our unwillingness to say aloud what we believe. A great many people, especially the new upper class, just need to start preaching what they practice.” (305). The alternative is to watch our nation continue to lose its social trust and our social and civic capital, and to be mystified as to why our manic focus on civil rights, individual freedoms, and redistribution is not sufficient to keep the American experiment flourishing.