I bought "Coming Apart" a week ago and have read about half of the book so far. This is my first exposure to Charles Murray and I am enjoying the book.
Part 1 of the book is about the increasing income spread between the top quintile and the remaining quintiles, and the reasons behind it. This part is fact based and should arouse little controversy. Here are the reasons (that I remember) that he cites for this income spread:
1. Increasing return to IQ. Many well-paying occupations require the completion of a professional degree, and a minimum IQ (e.g. 115) is required to complete these demanding degrees.
2. The College Sorting Machine: Fifty years ago, the average IQ of the Ivy League schools was little different from other colleges, but that rapidly changed. Today, the top schools capture a disproportionate share of highly talented people.
3. Homogamy: These intelligent people that are concentrated in certain colleges or in certain prestige professions tend to marry each other, a practice he defines as homogamy. Since intelligence is at least partially inherited, the children are likely to also be more intelligent than average.
4. Concentration into "SuperZips". The successful people want to live in nice neighborhoods with good schools, and while each person makes an independent decision, as a group they concentrate themselves into a small subset of desirable zip codes he calls "SuperZips". SuperZips are upper-middle class or wealthy towns that hold what he calls the "broad elite". The broad elite consists of professionals (doctors, lawyers, engineers) that roughly are in the top 5% of income.
The net result of this segregation is that the children of professionals become socially isolated from the world at large. He has a 25-question quiz that determines how well you fit in with the rest of society. Questions include:
* Do you have a close friend that is an evangelical Christian?
* In the last month, have you purchased mass market beer (Bud, Bud Lite, Busch, Miller, etc.)?
* Have you ever spent a year in poverty?
* Do you know anyone who despite significant effort, could only get "C"s in high school?
* Have you ever watched an episode of Oprah or Judge Judy to completion?
* In the last month, have you intentionally socialized with someone who was smoking a cigarette?
I had DD13 take a portion of this test (the parts that were appropriate for her age) and she scored much lower than I would have at that age for the same questions. But then I grew up in a poor town, and she is growing up in one of the SuperZips listed in the book.
The second part of this book describes what he thinks are the reasons for a new white underclass. This part is controversial, but he lays out ample evidence . In particular, he cites the decline of four key virtues: Marriage, Religion, Industrious and Honesty. He compares the shifts in these virtues between a fictionalized Belmont, MA (a SuperZip) and Fishtown, PA (8th percentile in income). He pays particular attention to the increase of illegitimate children and the negative outcomes that it has on children.
I am now reading Part 3, and will add more when I finish the book.
