In five pages this report discusses the political scientist's theories regarding American and British societies as they pertain to welfare system abolition, babies born out of wedlock and other problems with the argument presented that his theories are inaccurate because the context of crime and the 'underclass' are not appropriately presented. Three sources are cited in the bibliography.
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theories regarding the birth of out-of-wedlock babies, the abolition of the welfare system, and the numerous social problems inherent in American (and more recently, British) society. He believes society
will continue to disintegrate unless identification with groups and a criminal underclass are eliminated. However, his assertions regarding the underclass ultimately do not provide an adequate explanation of crime because
it removes issues of culture and sub-culture from their proper context. The "Underclass" Murray originally based his theories regarding the underclass on his extrapolations and comparisons of what happened with
the African American community in terms of unmarried women giving birth and what outcomes have been seen as a result of a phenomenon that began decades ago. In October 1993,
he explained in an "op-ed" piece for The Wall Street Journal that, according to Barone (1993), he explained that: "... when New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote his 1965
warning about the disintegration of the black family, 26 percent of black births were to unwed mothers. Today, the figure among whites is 22 percent-- only 4 percentage points lower"
(pp. 34). The point that Murray went on to make was that in less than thirty years, that percentage increased to nearly 70 percent and that it can be
seen to be directly related to the existence of the "criminal underclass" (pp. 34). He believes that because the same levels of increase in illegitimate births are taking place in
the low-income white population: "You will have an underclass that is about four or five times the size of the one we have now" (pp. 34). That is then likely
to lead, according to Murray, to a situation in which the United States will become as violent as any Latin American nation and will then face the same sort of