Inequality
by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth
by Claude S. Fischer, Michael
Hout, Martin Sanchez Jankowski
Reviews
Daniel Bell
One of the most important books on what
divides America socially and economically since the work of Christopher
Jencks and his Harvard colleagues nearly a quarter century ago.
Book Description
As debate rages over the widening and destructive
gap between the rich and the rest of Americans, Claude Fischer and his
colleagues present a comprehensive new treatment of inequality in America.
They challenge arguments that expanding inequality is the natural, perhaps
necessary, accompaniment of economic growth. They refute the claims of
the incendiary bestseller The Bell Curve
(1994) through a clear, rigorous re-analysis of the very data its authors,
Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, used to contend that inherited differences
in intelligence explain inequality. Inequality by Design offers
a powerful alternative explanation, stressing that economic fortune depends
more on social circumstances than on IQ, which is itself a product of society.
More critical yet, patterns of inequality must be explained by looking
beyond the attributes of individuals to the structure of society. Social
policies set the "rules of the game" within which individual abilities
and efforts matter. And recent policies have, on the whole, widened the
gap between the rich and the rest of Americans since the 1970s. Not only
does the wealth of individuals' parents shape their chances for a good
life, so do national policies ranging from labor laws to investments in
education to tax deductions. The authors explore the ways that America
- the most economically unequal society in the industrialized world - unevenly
distributes rewards through regulation of the market, taxes, and government
spending. It attacks the myth that inequality fosters economic growth,
that reducing economic inequality requires enormous welfare expenditures,
and that there is little we can do to alter the extent of inequality. It
also attacks the injurious myth of innate racial inequality, presenting
powerful evidence that racial differences in achievement are the consequences,
not the causes, of social inequality. By refusing to blame inequality on
an unchangeable human nature and an inexorable market - an excuse that
leads to resignation and passivity - Inequality by Design shows
how we can advance policies that widen opportunity for all.
Customer Comments
A reader from Pittsburgh,
August 1, 1999
Easy-to-read, yet academic, critique
of The Bell Curve
The numerous authors of this tome do a fine
job in their criticism of Herrnstein and Murray. They discuss where those
authors were correct, where they twisted statistics to meet their own goals,
where they made false assumptions and where they committed bad science.
This book doesn't get much into the genetic end of things, but rather discusses
other causes of inequality and the flaws in the research of The Bell
Curve. Recommended for anyone who wants a serious, scholarly, critique
of pop science.
A reader, December 3, 1996
An excellent, thorough, accessible critique
of The Bell Curve
Fischer et al. launch a reasoned yet devastating
critique on methodological grounds of Herrnstein & Murray's infamous
"The Bell Curve." The first half of the book details technical errors
and omissions from TBC, offering three distinct arguments against Herrnstein
& Murray's basic claims, all using the same data they used in "The
Bell Curve." Then the second half of the book offers a substantive
proposal for understanding income and wealth inequality in the United States,
rooted in the same data Herrnstein & Murray used. Highly recommended.
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