Family : New Right - Murray

• Charles Murray

  The New Right tend to be against the welfare state as they believe that it encourages individuals to be dependent on benefits. The Culture of Dependency theory put forward by Charles Murray assumes that the poor need to take responsibility for their situation as dependency creates more poverty and unemployment. The concept of the 'underclass' is used to describe those dependent on welfare benefits.

  This is a class beneath the working class characterised by long term unemployment, high levels of crime and unstable families.
• Charles Murray

  Murray's views on the underclass provided a basis for severe cuts in welfare benefits and attacks on the poor throughout the 1980s. He said there was a 'culture of dependency' which was socialised from generation to generation and the only way to prevent it was to reduce state intervention and welfare support.
• Cycle of underclass

  Welfare benefits are given to those who don’t work

  so

  People don’t need to work, men no longer need to be responsible for their children

  so

  Children grow up without a working male role model

  so

  Children learn they can live on benefits and never have to work