 Joan Kennedy Taylor of the Manhattan Institute is credited with having brought the book into publication.Murray's main thesis is that social welfare programs, as they have historically been implemented in the United States, tend to increase poverty rather than decrease it because they create incentives rewarding short-sighted behavior not conducive to escaping poverty in the long term.Christopher Jencks wrote a detailed review in the May 9, 1985 issue of the "New York Review of Books" in which he describes the book as a work of "Social Darwinism" which owes its popularity not to its scientific rigor but rather to its utility in providing a veneer of "moral legitimacy for budget cuts that many politicians want to make in order to reduce the federal deficit."