Copyright 1993 by The Brookings Institution. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. Policy elites, whether liberal or conservative, usually explain the problems of the urban underclass in terms of wrong incentives.
Ordinary citizens see the matter differently.
Some of these attitudes may be the result of scarce legitimate jobs and abundant criminal opportunities. But if those factors were the whole story, the results of carefully evaluated efforts to change behavior by supplying jobs, providing training, or altering penalties would not be as discouraging as they are. And if the objective conditions of inner-city life were all that mattered, then we would not see such great differences in behavior among individuals and groups confronting similar conditions. Without denying the importance of incentives, I want to side with the view of the average citizen who believes that poor self-control and indifference to the rights of others arise in large part from poor family training. The chief means by which every society induces its members to exercise a modicum of self-control and to assign a reasonable value to the preferences of others is the family.