Sociologist Charles Murray explains divergence between U.S. social classes

The nation has seen an unprecedented divergence between the upper and working classes during the past 50 years, sociologist and author Charles Murray explained at a Tuesday afternoon lecture in the Whig Hall Senate Chamber.

Murray, who is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, discussed his new book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” which was published in January 2012.

Murray is the author of several books, including the best-seller “The Bell Curve,” which was published in 1994. The book, which examined variations in intelligence in American society, made controversial claims about the relationship between intelligence and race, the genetic components of intelligence and the role of intelligence in predicting future success.

Murray said there were three ways in which the upper and working classes have diverged over time: marriage, industry and religiosity.

In 1960, 94 percent of those in the white upper class between the ages of 30 and 49 were married, he said. Today, this figure has declined to 84 percent, though it has been stable since the 1980s.

“Marriage is in a very healthy state in the upper middle class,” Murray said.

But he noted that only 48 percent of white working class people between the ages of 30 and 49 are married, saying that the decline in marriage rates has harmed children’s emotional development. He added that he thought this decline has diminished social capital, which he defined as a community’s ability to solve problems, by decreasing the number of parents who are active in improving their community for the sake of their children.

Murray also said that over time the white working class has become less “industrious,” as evidenced by the fact that 1 in 8 white working class men, ages 30 to 49, are unemployed.

“As of 1960, if you were a man between the ages of 30 and 49 and you were not completely, utterly and totally physically disabled, you were expected to work,” he said. “If you did not do so, if you preferred to sit around in the house, you were considered a bum.”

Since these social pressures are no longer imposed on the working class, many more men are unemployed nowadays, Murray explained.

The working class is also much less religious than it used to be, he said. Murray said he views this change as problematic for American political structures because religion used to inculcate people with a set of moral norms that encouraged obedience to the state’s rules.

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“Religion was the thing which kept self-governance going,” he said. “Self-governance in the sense of restraining one’s own actions.”

These class divergences in marriage rates, industriousness and religiosity have led to the breakdown of working class communities, he said.

“You have working class communities which, 50 years ago, functioned really well — they solved problems, they were safe, they were proud to be there,” Murray said. He added that this is not nearly as true today.

Meanwhile, the upper class — which he describes in his book as an aristocracy of inherited intelligence — is becoming ever more separated from mainstream America, he said. This upper class, he explained, has reproduced itself as colleges have focused on admitting the most intelligent, as opposed to the richest, people, and those intelligent people have begun to meet and marry each other.

“An increasing proportion of the kids who are really, really smart are coming from — guess where? — the unions of people who are really, really smart,” he said.

Members of the upper class are also living in the same areas. Murray referred to the very wealthy neighborhoods in the Washington, D.C. area, which are surrounded by other upper-middle class neighborhoods. “The people who are the movers and shakers are not only living together, they’re buffered,” he said.

Murray said he has developed a quiz titled “Are you in a cultural bubble?” to detect whether people are living in these secluded upper-class areas. He said that the most important question that distinguishes a secluded upper-class person is “have you ever held a job that caused a body part to hurt at the end of the day?”

“If you have not held such a job, you are unable to understand what work is like for a large portion of the American population,” he added. This lack of comprehension on the part of the upper class can lead to policy mistakes, he said.

“As you get into a position of influence, you’re going to be making assumptions about those people [in the working class] which are not true,” Murray explained.

“Sometimes paternalism is OK, but only if the pater knows the child,” Murray added.

During the question-and-answer session immediately after the lecture, one student asked Murray how Princetonians, as probable members of the upper class, should relate to the working class.

“Don’t take an internship next summer,” Murray said. “Get in the car, drive out to Great Falls, Mont. and get a job waiting tables.”

In an interview with The Daily Princetonian, Murray added that the upper class should “preach what they practice” to the working class.

Murray’s talk, “Coming Apart at the Seams: America’s New Cultural Divide,” was co-sponsored by the Princeton Tory, the American Whig-Cliosophic Society and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.