Charles Murray's book, "Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980," proposes the abolition of benefit programs for all working-aged persons for the following reasons: (1) it is logically impossible for the government to aid the poor by creating incentives for people to become poor; (2) since the mid-1960s the United States has so strengthened these incentives that the poverty rate has stopped falling; and (3) the principal victims of this process have been a segment of the black population who have been devastated by their dependence on government programs. Although Murray's first proposition is plausible, considering the history of welfare programs since the 1960s, there is no evidence to support his second and third propositions. Between 1973 and 1980 the number of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) recipients remained essentially unchanged but the number of persons in poverty rose by 6.3 million. And AFDC payments had no effect on the family structures of the poor black population. An examination of Murray's data reveals that he disregarded economic trends because he misread the statistics. Murray is right in his basic claim that "economic growth during the 1950s and 1960s was strong but during the 1970s it was weak and progress in reducing poverty ceased," but he overdramatizes it in his book. His world view is not wrong; it is incomplete: he understates the system's self-correcting tendencies. A table illustrates some of the data. (BJV)