Abstract

Charles Murray has followed up his book, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950?1980, which played a major role in the attack on the effectiveness of recent social policy, with a more ambitious book, In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government, which extends and generalizes the analysis of the first. His starting point is to ask what we are ultimately aiming at in social policy. Our evaluations of the effectiveness of social policies generally consider proximate and intermediate aims rather than ultimate ends: for example, we ask if a welfare program provides enough food and shelter. Yet our actual end is the promotion of the happiness of the recipients, which requires, Murray argues, not the most extensive provision of aid but rather policies that enable people, acting together in voluntary communities, to create the institutions which best satisfy their needs. Murray sees little role for government in social policy, even in areas (such as education) in which this role is widely accepted. He may be somewhat Utopian in his belief that the desire and capacity for community is so widespread as to make it possible to enlist the energies of people in voluntary associations to replace government action in a host of areas in which it now operates.